NEGRO PECULIARITIES. 305 



gluttons, and importunate beggars. They appear 

 to have no natural affections; for their women are 

 simply kept as drudges and beasts of burden, and 

 they do not hesitate to sell their children for rum, 

 or to abandon their nearest kindred when sick and 

 unable to provide for themselves. Labat describes 

 them as "all knaves, only differing in degree;" 

 another traveller says, " Show me a black and I'll 

 show you a thief." But the author of " Savage 

 Africa" goes further, for he says, "It has been 

 proved by measurements, by microscopes, and by 

 analysis, that the typical negro is something be- 

 tween a child, a dotard, and a beast.* 



I confess that I never felt sufficient interest in 

 the animal to go into these niceties, but my own 

 experience leads me to believe the negro to be an 



* I fancy " the beast " alluded to must be of the genus " Viverra," 

 for the natural perfume that exudes from their bodies is sickening 

 in the extreme ; of which fact they are themselves well aware, as 

 they allude to it in one of their hymns, quoted by Captain Burton 

 in " The Wanderings of an F.E.G.S." 



" God lub dis nigger well — 

 God twig um by de smell — 

 So save um soul from hell, 



And all palaver." 

 X 



