Akkrah and Adampe, Gold Coast, Africa. 291 



than others to the afflicting concourse of wars, pestilences, and other 

 depopulating calamities, in progress of time evince their decadence 

 by a gradual decline or total loss of those inherent principles that con- 

 stituted the basis of their power, while others, from the same control- 

 ling elements, become suddenly prostrated, and reduced almost to the 

 verge of extinction, lletaining to the last their peculiar traces of 

 difference, they succumb to the most warlike of their aggressors, 

 until at length the predominant masses of their opponents so far ab- 

 sorb the scattered fragments, that all vestiges of their previous ex- 

 istence disappear. Thus, by such ceaseless and indirect agencies, 

 nations after nations rise, flourish, and decay, and are eventually 

 blotted out from the page of history. The races, however, inhabiting 

 the sea-girt lowlands of Western Africa, have apparently suffered less 

 from these systems of extirpation, when contrasted with others ; for, 

 located at a remote distance from the sphere of any internal convul- 

 sions, and enjoying but a moderate extent of frontier, with fewer ad- 

 verse neighbours, they, of course, are less liable to the incidental 

 operation of these causes. Although unable at first to stem the re- 

 sistless influx of immigration, or the invasion of more potent tribes, 

 which might partly subjugate and dispossess them of their territories, 

 yet, the occurrence of these events at present, so far as can be ascer- 

 tained, have seldom been of that permanent or effective duration as 

 to entirely obliterate their nationality. Hence, we shall discover, 

 dispersed in various localities, encompassed by the barriers of more 

 populous kingdoms, the isolated vestiges of races, which, from dim 

 and obscure sources, and through a succession of ages, have retained, 

 in almost primitive integrity, their laws, usages, and institutions. 

 Rational inferences, confirmed by the results of experience, have 

 long since tended to point out the fact, that where the inhabitants 

 of any petty country, from their close propinquity to some of the 

 more powerful nations surrounding them, have maintained an inti- 

 mate intercourse for any protracted period, they have become 

 more or less tinctured with the prevalent customs and manners 

 of the latter, either in consequence of their supposed utility, or from 

 other views equally in unison with their social interests. But that 

 these disjected communities should in general be enabled to resist 

 the effects of such influential impressions, and after the lapse of 

 centuries be capable of conserving, from the innovations of time and 

 hostility of rivals, those essential peculiarities of structure and deri- 

 vation, which sever them from others in their near vicinage, fur- 

 nishes a remarkable subject for reflection, and must always excite 

 deep interest and sympathy for those mysterious laws of humanity, 

 that still exert, in unimpared'energy, a silent, yet vital, authority 

 over the future destiny and distribution of the negro races. 



Making due allowance for the modifications which have necessarily 

 occurred from events associated with European domination, and also 

 from those that prominently figure as the sequence of certain con- 



T 2 



