Chap. XXI. CAUSES OP DECREASE OF POPULATION. 435 



Thomas and Prince's, who purchase people for their 

 masters, who are also negroes. They cross to and 

 from the mainland in small canoes, and thus avoid 

 the cruisers. 



The decrease of the African population is owing to 

 several causes : — The Slave Trade, polygamy, barren- 

 ness of women, death among children, plagues, and 

 witchcraft ; the latter taking away more lives than , 

 any Slave Trade ever did. The negro does not seem 

 to diminish only in the region I have visited ; but in 

 every other part of Africa, travellers, who after the 

 lapse of a few years have returned a second time in 

 the same country, have noticed a decrease of popula- 

 tion. 



Tuchey, in ex|)loring the Congo, noticed it, and 

 expressed his astonishment at seeing the coimtry so 

 little inhabited, compared to what he expected from 

 the accounts he had read of that river in the works 

 of the Catholic missionaries. 



The women of the interior are prolific, and in de- 

 spite of it shall we assume that the negro race has 

 run its course, and that in due course of time it will 

 disappear, like many races of mankind have done 

 before him ? The Southern States of America were, 

 I believe, the only country in which the negro is 

 known to have increased. 



The reader who has followed me through the 

 volume of my former exploration and the present 

 book, will have been able to gather an idea of the 

 general character and disposition of the negro of this 

 part of Africa, as he now stands. I have made re- 

 searches to ascertain if his race had formerly left 



