1857.] Prof. Turner's Lecture. 459 



viz., that the magnificent valley of the Amazon is in God's Provi- 

 dence the destined home and theater of development for the African 



or black race, as the valley of the Mississippi is for the white race 



that as the North American Continent is the scene for the destined 

 highest development of the human mind, and the loftiest achieve- 

 ments of genius, so the Southern is reserved for the highest eon- 

 summation of human affection, the full development of the heart 

 which everywhere in the negro preponderates over the head, or in- 

 tellect. 



To this great consummation the speaker saw — and made us, how- 

 ever reluctant, see — all the great arrangements of Providence in all 

 ages to tend : the blanching of the white races in the northern climes; 

 the darkening of the negro race under a torrid sun ; the rapid and 

 early development of white civilization on the commercial continent 

 of Europe, all penetrated with rivers and arms of the sea ; the tardy 

 growth of the African in the impenetrable fastnesses of the rock- 

 bound, riverless, harborless, mysterious continent of their births ; 

 the earlier settlement of the United States by the whites ; the legal- 

 ization of the Slave trade by Europeans, wlio had ships until three 

 millions of Africans xcho had no ships had been conveyed to the 

 States, their house of Egyptian bondage, there to learn the elements 

 of Christian civilization ; the prohibition of that trade thereafter ; 

 the astonishing revalations of (now the lamented) Lieut. Herndon, 

 concerning the vast resources, the boundless fertility of the great 

 Amazonian valley which lies under the same torrid sun with Africa 

 and right over against the land the stupendous Amazon itself, with. 

 15,000 miles of navigable waters, in itself, and its tributaries, and its 

 ample mouth, of 150 miles in breadth, opening wide in invitation 

 toward the land of the Negro races ; the gradual prevalence of this 

 race already in the kingdom of Brazil, wliere they luxuriate under 

 congenial skies ; and the gradual retreat of the blacks from the 

 nortern States of Slavery, and their concentration and accumulation 

 in the southern, where they already outnumber the whites in num- 

 bers and physical power. 



But no sketch can do justice to the stern logic and bold, almost 

 prophetic deductions of the Professor on this occasion. That all 

 our readers may some day be favored by listening as we did to the 

 lecturer himself, is our earnest wish. — Ed. 



