THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE. 
517 
known to Americans, I indulge the hope I am aiding on, 
though in a small degree, the good time coming yet, when 
slavery as well as piracy will be chased from the world. 
Many have but a faint idea of the evils that trading in 
slaves inflicts on the victims and authors of its atrocities. 
Most people imagine that negroes, after being brutalized 
by a long course of servitude, with but few of the ame- 
liorating influences that elevate the more favored races, 
are fair average specimens of the African man. Our ideas 
are derived from slaves of the West coast, who have for 
ages been subject to domestic bondage and all the depres- 
sing agencies of a most unhealthy climate. These have 
told most injuriously on their physical frames, while fraud 
and the rum trade have ruined their moral natures so as 
not to discriminate the difference of the monstrous injustice. 
The main body of the population is living free in the in- 
terior, under their own chiefs and laws, cultivating their 
own farms, catching fish in their own rivers, or fighting 
bravely with the grand old denizens of the forests, which 
in more recent continents can only be reached in rocky 
strata or under perennial ice. Win wood Reade hit the 
truth when he said the ancient Egyptian, with his large, 
round, black eyes, full, luscious lips, and somewhat de- 
pressed nose, is far nearer the typical negro than the west 
coast African, who has been debased by the unhealthy land 
he lives in. The slaves generally, and especially those on 
the west cost at Zanzibar and elsewhere, are extremely 
ugly. I have no prejudice against their color; indeed any 
one who lives long among them forgets they are black, and 
feels that they are just fellow men ; but the low, retreating 
forehead, prognathous jaws, lark heels and other physical 
peculiarities common among slaves and west African ne- 
groes, always awaken some feelings of aversion akin to 
those with which we view specimens of the Bill Sykes and 
“Bruiser ” class in England. I would not utter a syllable 
calculated to press down either class more deeply in the 
*»ire in which it is already sunk, but I wish to point out 
44 
