229 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



intellectual are low, in some tribes quite puerile; yet the 

 moral impulses are not unfrequently of a most noble nature. 

 They offer, therefore, a discordant mixture of qualities, 

 wherein the good predominates, till the European, not mis- 

 guided by personal interests or prejudices, cannot refrain from 

 feelings of affection for them. They all believe in some kind 

 of future state, though religious sensations are with them 

 superstitious and childish mummeries, too often connected 

 with fetiche necromancy, which deals in the crimes of poison- 

 ing and murder. Thought is habitually dormant, and, when 

 roused, it is manifested by loud soliloquy and gesticulations, 

 regardless of circumstances. War is a passion that excites in 

 them a brutal disregard of human feelings; it entails the 

 deliberate murder of prisoners ; and victims are slain to serve 

 the manes of departed chiefs. Even cannibalism is frequent 

 among the tribes of the interior. But these habits were once 

 not unknown to the highest endowed Caucasians; human 

 sacrifices belonged to the heroic age of Greece; to the historical 

 of India, Phoenicia, Carthage, Egypt, and Celtica; to nations 

 who must have known better, and were not, like the African 

 savage, in mental nonage, without neighbors to teach a better 

 doctrine or more humane example ; for wherever higher moral 

 duties have been promulgated to Negroes, they have been 

 quickly accepted. Notwithstanding the listless torpidity 

 caused by excessive heat, the perceptive faculties of the chil- 

 dren are far from contemptible. They have a quick apprehen- 

 sion of the ridiculous ; often surpassing the intelligence of the 

 white, and only drop behind them about the twelfth year, 

 when the reflective powers begin to have the ascendency. 



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 abso- 

 lute 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 



