THE HUMAN SPECIES. 229 



housewives, they are charitable to the wants of the wayfaring 

 visitants; within doors orderly; and, personally, very clean; 

 they are joyous; noisy; in the night-time indefatigable danc- 

 ers equally with the men, who are in general orderly, trust- 

 worthy, 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 honors human nature remains — in 

 apathy, the typical woolly-haired races have never invented a 

 reasoned theological system, discovered 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 com- 

 menced a self-evolving civilization. Conquest with them has 

 been confined to kindred tribes, and produced only slaughter. 

 Even Christianity, of more than three centuries' duration, in 

 Congo, has scarcely excited a progressive civilization, because 

 it is unattended by the stimulus of a stranger race (for the 

 small number of Portuguese officials, priests, exiles, criminals, 

 and slave merchants, are inadequate, and of all European 

 nations least capable of stirring the mind to activity, by educa- 

 tion, and the example of exertion) ; notwithstanding that the 

 nations south of the Zezere have a more intellectual aspect, 

 and have a barter trade across the continent to Mozambique. 



Thus, the good qualities given to the Negro by the bounty 

 of Nature, have served only to make him a slave, trodden down 

 by every remorseless foot, and to brand him for ages with the 



* The simple formulce 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 have no doubt made the present generation more gram- 

 matically correct. 



20 



