124 



COMMERCE. 



groes, who would become utterly extin6t, if their continual 

 mortality were not to be supplied by repeated importations. 



The melancholy which oppresses them on seeing themselves 

 reduced to so hard a condition of slavery ; the cruel treatment 

 infli6led on them for the slightest causes ; the insufficiency and 

 unwholesome quality of their food ; and the rigorous tasks from 

 which the females themselves are not exempted, at the close 

 of their pregnancy, and immediately after the birth ; are so 

 may principles destructive of their propagation. 



If it has failed in a proportionate degree, the Africans who 

 are free from these galling chains have not been deficient in 

 reproduction ; but it has been of a nature so prejudicial to the 

 kingdom, as to have repeatedly called for the interference of 

 the legislature. It consists of that mixture of the different 

 casts, which, by the depuration of successive generations, 

 acquires at the fourth a colour perfectly v/hite ; in the same 

 way as we perceive, in the same number of filiations, but in 

 an inverse progression, the transition from white to black. 



The European emigrants embarked on board the fleets and 

 galleons, were almost all of them buried in the sepulchre of 

 the Spaniards ; by which name Porto-Bello is known, on ac- 

 count of the morbid temperature of the air. In one instance, 

 no less than six hundred of them perished in the space of a 

 week ; and such in general was the mortality which ensued, 

 that it became necessary to discontinue the embarkations. 

 Those who, to avoid these perils, proceeded to Peru, and 

 those who have since been conveyed thither by the route of 

 Cape Horn, either have been persons who, availing themselves 

 of the means they possessed to acquire a fortune, have returned 

 to spend it in their own country ; or those who, discouraged at 



the 



