196 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Collectively, the untutored Negro mind is confiding, 

 single hearted, naturally kind and hospitable. We 

 speak not without personal experience, 'the female sex 

 is affectionate, to absolute devotedness, in the character 

 of mother, child, nurse, and attendant upon the sick, 

 though these be strangers, and the often experienced 

 reward scarcely amounting to thanks. As housewives, 

 they are charitable to the wants of wayfaring visitants ; 

 within doors orderly ; and, personally, very clean : they 

 are joyous ; noisy ; in the night time indefatigable 

 dancers equally with the men, who are in general 

 orderly, trustworthy, brave and unrepining. Both sexes 

 are easily ruled, and appreciate what is good, under 

 the guidance of common justice and prudence. 



Yet, where so much that honours human nature re- 

 mains in apathy, the typical woolly haired races have 

 never invented a reasoned theological system ; dis- 

 covered an alphabet ; framed a grammatical language ; 

 nor made the least step in science or art. * They have 

 scarcely comprehended what they have learned; or 

 retained a civilization taught them by contact with more 

 refined nations, so soon as that contact has ceased. 

 They have at no time formed great political states, 

 nor commenced a self-evolving civilization. Conquest, 



* The simple formulae of Negro languages remain, when 

 they are obliged to learn European ; thus, all the Negro 

 slaves of tropical America speak a dialect in form the 

 same as the general African tongue, though the words are 

 Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, or Danish. 

 Education and time has no doubt made the present genera- 

 tion more grammatically correct. 



