127 



this coin is at a place called Ballilapa, near Melville Bay, at the south 

 end of the island. 



Since they have begun to manufacture palm oil, which is sold in 

 blighs or wicker pots, containing from one to ten g.iUons, and which 

 they call " Bectapas," they exchange this commodity for British 

 manufactured goods. Save the manufacture of about three hundred 

 tons of palm oil in the year, on an island which could produce double 

 that number of thousand, and the growth of a few millions of yams, 

 their country, though teeming with the indigenous productions of 

 nature to its very summit, is as unproductive as the Sahai-a. I believe 

 them to be the laziest and idlest race in creation. No offer of any 

 premium will make them clear the gi'ound or cultivate it ; and were 

 their yams or plantains to grow spontaneously, I think they would be 

 content with sheds of huts in the branches, and bite the fruit off the 

 trees without the trouble of plucking or cooking it. 



ANGLO-AFRICANISMS. 



Although feeling conscious that from the time when the first vessel 

 of thirty tons burden, which sailed from Liverpool for Africa in 1709, 

 down to the year 1855, when the customs shew an export of ninety-nine 

 vessels in the same direction, of the aggregate tonnage of 43,346 tons, 

 a 'very interesting history might be written on the subject, I prefer 

 trying to show how that big lisping child takes England for its model 

 before any other nation with which it has communicated — in language, 

 a's well as in commercial pursuits — and that therefore there is a great 

 duty incumbent on us to assist it in its struggles to attain the position 

 of manhood. 



Let philologists rail against me as they will for being deficient in a 

 taste for modern classics, I must say that I cannot see the utility of 

 those grammar compilations of African languages whereof our mission- 

 ary presses have lately been so prolific. What use, for instance, can 

 Koelles " Polyglotta Africana " be applied to, save to lie on the shelf as 

 a philological curiosity ? For the labour of head and hand employed 

 in its compilation, the author certainly deserves more than the high 

 honour lately paid to him by the Academies of Paris. But its practical 

 utility I still feel urged to question ; and all the languages of the 

 native tribes that I have seen printed appear to me so deficient in 

 their grammatical structure, as well as in words to convey ideas of 

 English art, law, industry, honour, morality, or religion, that it seems 

 only " making confusion worse confounded " any attempt to Anglicise 

 the African races by translating our language into theirs. 



One of the most remarkable peculiarities of the native Africans, as T. 

 have stated elsewhere, is their faculty of imitation. The words "saby" 



