THE

RISING SON;

OR,

THE ANTECEDENTS AND ADVANCEMENT
OF THE COLORED RACE.

BY

WM. WELLS BROWN, M. D.

AUTHOR OF “SKETCHES OF PLACES AND PEOPLE ABROAD,” “THE
BLACK MAN,” “THE NEGRO IN THE REBELLION,”
“CLOTELLE,” ETC.

Thirteenth Thousand.

BOSTON:
A. G. BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS.
1882.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
By A. G. BROWN
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

After availing himself of all the reliable information obtainable, the author is compelled to acknowledge the scantiness of materials for a history of the African race. He has throughout endeavored to give a faithful account of the people and their customs, without concealing their faults.

Several of the biographical sketches are necessarily brief, owing to the difficulty in getting correct information in regard to the subjects treated upon. Some have been omitted on account of the same cause.

WM. WELLS BROWN.

Cambridgeport, Mass.

Publishers’ Note to the 13th Edition.

Few works written upon the colored race have equaled in circulation “The Rising Son.”

In the past two years the sales have more than doubled in the Southern States, and the demand for the book is greatly on the increase. Twelve thousand copies have already been sold; and if this can be taken as an index to the future, we may look forward with hope that the colored citizens are beginning to appreciate their own authors.

WELCOME TO “THE RISING SON.”

BY ELIJAH W. SMITH.

CONTENTS.

MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

BY ALONZO D. MOORE.

Thirty years ago, a young colored man came to my father’s house at Aurora, Erie County, New York, to deliver a lecture on the subject of American Slavery, and the following morning I sat upon his knee while he told me the story of his life and escape from the South. Although a boy of eight years, I still remember the main features of the narrative, and the impression it made upon my mind, and the talk the lecture of the previous night created in our little quiet town. That man was William Wells Brown, now so widely-known, both at home and abroad. It is therefore with no little hesitancy that I consent to pen this sketch of one whose name has for many years been a household word in our land.

William Wells Brown was born in Lexington, Ky., in the year 1816. His mother was a slave, his father a slaveholder. The boy was taken to the State of Missouri in infancy, and spent his boyhood in St. Louis. At the age of ten years he was hired out to a captain of a steamboat running between St. Louis and New Orleans, where he remained a year or two, and was then employed as office boy by Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was at that time editor of the St. Louis Times. Here William first began the groundwork of his education. After one year spent in the printing office, the object of our sketch was again let out to a captain of one of the steamboats plying on the river. In the year 1834 William made his escape from the boat, and came North.

He at once obtained a situation on a steamer on Lake Erie, where, in the position of steward, he was of great service to fugitive slaves making their way to Canada. In a single year he gave a free passage across the lake to sixty-five fugitives. Making his home in Buffalo, Mr. Brown organized a vigilance committee whose duties were to protect and aid slaves, while passing through that city on their way to the “Land of the free,” or to the eastern States. As chairman of that committee, Mr. Brown was of great assistance to the fleeing bondmen. The Association kept a fund on hand to employ counsel in case of capture of a fugitive, besides furnishing all with clothing, shoes, and whatever was needed by those who were in want. Escaping from the South without education, the subject of our sketch spent the winter nights in an evening school and availed himself of private instructions to gain what had been denied him in his younger days.

In the autumn of 1843, he accepted an agency to lecture for the Anti-slavery Society, and continued his labors in connection with that movement until 1849; when he accepted an invitation to visit England. As soon as it was understood that the fugitive slave was going abroad, the American Peace Society elected him as a delegate to represent them at the Peace Congress at Paris.

Without any solicitation, the Executive Committee of the American Anti-slavery Society strongly recommended Mr. Brown to the friends of freedom in Great Britain. The President of the above Society gave him private letters to some of the leading men and women in Europe. In addition to these, the colored citizens of Boston held a meeting the evening previous to his departure, and gave Mr. Brown a public farewell, and passed resolutions commending him to the confidence and hospitality of all lovers of liberty in the mother-land.

Such was the auspices under which this self-educated man sailed for England on the 18th of July, 1849.

Mr. Brown arrived in Liverpool, and proceeded at once to Dublin, where warm friends of the cause of freedom greeted him. The land of Burke, Sheridan, and O’Connell would not permit the American to leave without giving him a public welcome. A large and enthusiastic meeting held in the Rotunda, and presided over by James Haughton, Esq., gave Mr. Brown the first reception which he had in the Old World.

After a sojourn of twenty days in the Emerald Isle, the fugitive started for the Peace Congress which was to assemble at Paris. The Peace Congress, and especially the French who were in attendance at the great meeting, most of whom had never seen a colored person, were somewhat taken by surprise on the last day, when Mr. Brown made a speech. “His reception,” said La Presse, “was most flattering. He admirably sustained his reputation as a public speaker. His address produced a profound sensation. At its conclusion, the speaker was warmly greeted by Victor Hugo, President of the Congress, Richard Cobden, Esq., and other distinguished men on the platform. At the soirée given by M. de Tocqueville, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the American slave was received with marked attention.”

Having spent a fortnight in Paris and vicinity, viewing the sights, he returned to London. George Thompson, Esq., was among the first to meet the fugitive on his arrival at the English metropolis. A few days after, a very large meeting, held in the spacious Music Hall, Bedford Square, and presided over by Sir Francis Knowles, Bart., welcomed Mr. Brown to England. Many of Britain’s distinguished public speakers spoke on the occasion. George Thompson made one of his most brilliant efforts. This flattering reception gained for the fugitive pressing invitations from nearly all parts of the United Kingdom.

He narrates in his “Three Years in Europe,” many humorous incidents that occurred in his travels, and of which is the following:

“On a cold winter’s evening, I found myself seated before the fire, and alone, in the principal hotel in the ancient and beautiful town of Ludlow, and within a few minutes’ walk of the famous old castle from which the place derives its name. A long ride by coach had so completely chilled me, that I remained by the fire to a later hour than I otherwise would have.

“‘Did you ring, sir?’ asked the waiter, as the clock struck twelve.

“‘No,’ I replied; ‘but you may give me a light, and I will retire.’

“I was shown to my chamber, and was soon in bed. From the weight of the covering, I felt sure that the extra blanket which I had requested to be put on was there; yet I was shivering with cold. As the sheets began to get warm, I discovered, to my astonishment, that they were damp—indeed, wet. My first thought was to ring the bell for the servant, and have them changed; but, after a moment’s consideration, I resolved to adopt a different course. I got out of bed, pulled the sheets off, rolled them up, raised the window, and threw them into the street. After disposing of the wet sheets, I returned to bed, and got in between the blankets, and lay there trembling with cold till Morpheus came to my relief.

“The next morning I said nothing about the sheets, feeling sure that the discovery of their loss would be made by the chambermaid in due time. Breakfast over, I visited the ruins of the old castle, and then returned to the hotel, to await the coach for Hereford. As the hour drew near for me to leave, I called the waiter, and ordered my bill. ‘Yes, sir, in a moment,’ he replied, and left in haste. Ten or fifteen minutes passed away, and the servant once more came in, walked to the window, pulled up the blinds, and then went out.

“I saw that something was afloat; and it occurred to me that they had discovered the loss of the sheets, at which I was pleased; for the London newspapers were, at that time, discussing the merits and the demerits of the hotel accommodations of the kingdom, and no letters found a more ready reception in their columns than one on that subject. I had, therefore, made up my mind to have the wet sheets put in the bill, pay for them, and send the bill to the Times.

“The waiter soon returned again, and, in rather an agitated manner, said, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but the landlady is in the hall, and would like to speak to you.’ Out I went, and found the finest specimen of an English landlady that I had seen for many a day. There she stood, nearly as thick as she was tall, with a red face garnished around with curls, that seemed to say, ‘I have just been oiled and brushed.’ A neat apron covered a black alpaca dress that swept the floor with modesty, and a bunch of keys hung at her side. O, that smile! such a smile as none but an adept could put on. However, I had studied human nature too successfully not to know that thunder and lightning were concealed under that smile, and I nerved myself for the occasion.

“‘I am sorry to have to name it, sir,’ said she; ‘but the sheets are missing off your bed.’

“‘O, yes,’ I replied; ‘I took them off last night.’

“‘Indeed!’ exclaimed she; ‘and what did you do with them?’

“‘I threw them out of the window,’ said I.

“‘What! into the street?’

“‘Yes; into the street,’ I said.

“‘What did you do that for?’

“‘They were wet; and I was afraid that if I left them in the room they would be put on at night, and give somebody else a cold.’

“‘Then, sir,’ said she, ‘you’ll have to pay for them.’

“‘Make out your bill, madam,’ I replied, ‘and put the price of the wet sheets in it, and I will send it to the Times, and let the public know how much you charge for wet sheets.’

“I turned upon my heel, and went back to the sitting-room. A moment more, and my bill was brought in; but nothing said about the sheets, and no charge made for them. The coach came to the door; and as I passed through the hall leaving the house, the landlady met me, but with a different smile.

“‘I hope, sir,’ said she, ‘that you will never mention the little incident about the sheets. I am very sorry for it. It would ruin my house if it were known.’ Thinking that she was punished enough in the loss of her property, I promised not to mention the name of the house, if I ever did the incident.

“The following week I returned to the hotel, when I learned the fact from the waiter that they had suspected that I had stolen the sheets, and that a police officer was concealed behind the hall door, on the day that I was talking with the landlady. When I retired to bed that night, I found two jugs of hot water in the bed, and the sheets thoroughly dried and aired.

“I visited the same hotel several times afterwards, and was invariably treated with the greatest deference, which no doubt was the result of my night with the wet sheets.”

In 1852, Mr. Brown gave to the public his “Three Years in Europe,” a work which at once placed him high as an author, as will be seen by the following extracts from some of the English journals. The Eclectic Review, edited by the venerable Dr. Price, one of the best critics in the realm, said,—“Mr. Brown has produced a literary work not unworthy of a highly-cultivated gentleman.”

Rev. Dr. Campbell, in the British Banner, remarked: “We have read Mr. Brown’s book with an unusual measure of interest. Seldom, indeed, have we met with anything more captivating. A work more worthy of perusal has not, for a considerable time, come into our hands.”

“Mr. Brown writes with ease and ability,” said the Times, “and his intelligent observations upon the great question to which he has devoted and is devoting his life will command influence and respect.”

The Literary Gazette, an excellent authority, says of it, “The appearance of this book is too remarkable a literary event, to pass without a notice. At the moment when attention in this country is directed to the state of the colored people in America, the book appears with additional advantage; if nothing else were attained by its publication, it is well to have another proof of the capability of the negro intellect. Altogether, Mr. Brown has written a pleasing and amusing volume, and we are glad to bear this testimony to the literary merit of a work by a negro author.”

The Glasgow Citizen, in its review, remarked,—“W. Wells Brown is no ordinary man, or he could not have so remarkably surmounted the many difficulties and impediments of his training as a slave. By dint of resolution, self-culture, and force of character, he has rendered himself a popular lecturer to a British audience, and a vigorous expositor of the evils and atrocities of that system whose chains he has shaken off so triumphantly and forever. We may safely pronounce William Wells Brown a remarkable man, and a full refutation of the doctrine of the inferiority of the negro.”

The Glasgow Examiner said,—“This is a thrilling book, independent of adventitious circumstances, which will enhance its popularity. The author of it is not a man, in America, but a chattel,—a thing to be bought, and sold, and whipped; but in Europe, he is an author, and a successful one, too. He gives in this book an interesting and graphic description of a three years’ residence in Europe. The book will no doubt obtain, as it well deserves, a rapid and wide popularity.”

In the spring of 1853, the fugitive brought out his work, “Clotelle; or, the President’s Daughter,” a book of nearly three hundred pages, being a narrative of slave life in the Southern States. This work called forth new criticisms on the “Negro Author” and his literary efforts. The London Daily News pronounced it a book that would make a deep impression; while The Leader, edited by the son of Leigh Hunt, thought many parts of it “equal to anything which had appeared on the slavery question.”

The above are only a few of the many encomiums bestowed upon our author. Besides writing his books, Mr. Brown was also a regular contributor to the columns of The London Daily News, The Liberator, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and The National Anti-slavery Standard. When we add, that in addition to his literary labors, Mr. Brown was busily engaged in the study of the medical profession, it will be admitted that he is one of the most industrious of men. After remaining abroad nearly six years, and travelling extensively through Great Britain and on the continent, he returned to the United States in 1854, landing at Philadelphia, where he was welcomed in a large public meeting presided over by Robert Purvis, Esq.

On reaching Boston, a welcome meeting was held in Tremont Temple, with Francis Jackson, Esq., in the chair, and at which Wendell Phillips said,—“I rejoice that our friend Brown went abroad; I rejoice still more that he has returned. The years any thoughtful man spends abroad must enlarge his mind and store it richly. But such a visit is to a colored man more than merely intellectual education. He lives for the first time free from the blighting chill of prejudice. He sees no society, no institution, no place of resort or means of comfort from which his color debars him.

“We have to thank our friend for the fidelity with which he has, amid many temptations, stood by those whose good name religious prejudice is trying to undermine in Great Britain. That land is not all Paradise to the colored man. Too many of them allow themselves to be made tools of the most subtle of their race. We recognize, to-night, the clear-sightedness and fidelity of Mr. Brown’s course abroad, not only to thank him, but to assure our friends there that this is what the Abolitionists of Boston endorse.”

Mr. Phillips proceeded:—“I still more rejoice that Mr. Brown has returned. Returned to what? Not to what he can call his ‘country.’ The white man comes ‘home.’ When Milton heard, in Italy, the sound of arms from England, he hastened back—young, enthusiastic, and bathed in beautiful art as he was in Florence. ‘I would not be away,’ he said, ‘when a blow was struck for liberty.’ He came to a country where his manhood was recognized, to fight on equal footing.

“The black man comes home to no liberty but the liberty of suffering—to struggle in fetters for the welfare of his race. It is a magnanimous sympathy with his blood that brings such a man back. I honor it. We meet to do it honor. Franklin’s motto was, Ubi Libertas, ibi patria—Where liberty is, there is my country. Had our friend adopted that for his rule, he would have stayed in Europe. Liberty for him is there. The colored man who returns, like our friend, to labor, crushed and despised, for his race, sails under a higher flag. His motto is,—‘Where my country is, there will I bring liberty!’”

Although Dr. Brown could have entered upon the practice of his profession, for which he was so well qualified, he nevertheless, with his accustomed zeal, continued with renewed vigor in the cause of the freedom of his race.

In travelling through the country and facing the prejudice that met the colored man at every step, he saw more plainly the vast difference between this country and Europe.

In giving an account of his passage on the little steamer that plies between Ithica and Cayuga Bridge, he says,—

“When the bell rang for breakfast, I went to the table, where I found some twenty or thirty persons. I had scarcely taken my seat, when a rather snobby-appearing man, of dark complexion, looking as if a South Carolina or Georgia sun had tanned him, began rubbing his hands, and, turning up his nose, called the steward, and said to him, ‘Is it the custom on this boat to put niggers at the table with white people?’

“The servant stood for a moment, as if uncertain what reply to make, when the passenger continued, ‘Go tell the captain that I want him.’ Away went the steward. I had been too often insulted on account of my connection with the slave, not to know for what the captain was wanted. However, as I was hungry, I commenced helping myself to what I saw before me, yet keeping an eye to the door, through which the captain was soon to make his appearance. As the steward returned, and I heard the heavy boots of the commander on the stairs, a happy thought struck me; and I eagerly watched for the coming-in of the officer.

“A moment more, and a strong voice called out, ‘Who wants me?’

“I answered at once, ‘I, sir.’

“‘What do you wish?’ asked the captain.

“‘I want you to take this man from the table,’ said I.

“At this unexpected turn of the affair, the whole cabin broke out into roars of laughter; while my rival on the opposite side of the table seemed bursting with rage. The captain, who had joined in the merriment, said,—

“‘Why do you want him taken from the table?’

“‘Is it your custom, captain,’ said I, ‘to let niggers sit at table with white folks on your boat?’

“This question, together with the fact that the other passenger had sent for the officer, and that I had ‘stolen his thunder,’ appeared to please the company very much, who gave themselves up to laughter; while the Southern-looking man left the cabin with the exclamation, ‘Damn fools!’”

In the autumn of 1854, Dr. Brown published his “Sketches of Places and People Abroad,” that met with a rapid sale, and which the New York Tribune said, was “well-written and intensely interesting.”

His drama, entitled “The Dough Face,” written shortly after, and read by him before lyceums, gave general satisfaction wherever it was heard.

Indeed, in this particular line the doctor seems to excel, and the press was unanimous in its praise of his efforts. The Boston Journal characterized the drama and its reading as “interesting in its composition, and admirably rendered.”

“The Escape; or, Leap for Freedom,” followed the “Dough Face,” and this drama gave an amusing picture of slave life, and was equally as favorably received by the public.

In 1863, Dr. Brown brought out “The Black Man,” a work which ran through ten editions in three years, and which was spoken of by the press in terms of the highest commendation, and of which Frederick Douglass wrote in his own paper,—

“Though Mr. Brown’s book may stand alone upon its own merits, and stand strong, yet while reading its interesting pages,—abounding in fact and argument, replete with eloquence, logic, and learning, clothed with simple yet eloquent language,—it is hard to repress the inquiry, Whence has this man this knowledge? He seems to have read and remembered nearly everything which has been written and said respecting the ability of the negro, and has condensed and arranged the whole into an admirable argument, calculated both to interest and convince.”

William Lloyd Garrison said, in The Liberator, “This work has done good service, and proves its author to be a man of superior mind and cultivated ability.”

Hon. Gerritt Smith, in a letter to Dr. Brown, remarked,—“I thank you for writing such a book. It will greatly benefit the colored race. Send me five copies of it.”

Lewis Tappen, in his Cooper Institute speech, on the 5th of January, 1863, said,—“This is just the book for the hour; it will do more for the colored man’s elevation than any work yet published.”

The space allowed me for this sketch will not admit the many interesting extracts that might be given from the American press in Dr. Brown’s favor as a writer and a polished reader. However, I cannot here omit the valuable testimony of Professor Hollis Read, in his ably-written work, “The Negro Problem Solved.” On page 183, in writing of the intelligent colored men of the country, he says: “As a writer, I should in justice give the first place to Dr. William Wells Brown, author of ‘The Black Man.’”

“Clotelle,” written by Dr. Brown, a romance founded on fact, is one of the most thrilling stories that we remember to have read, and shows the great versatility of the cast of mind of our author.

The temperance cause in Massachusetts, and indeed, throughout New England, finds in Dr. Brown an able advocate.

The Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance of Massachusetts did itself the honor of electing him Grand Worthy Associate of that body, and thereby giving him a seat in the National Division of the Sons of Temperance of North America, where, at its meeting in Boston, 1871, his speech in behalf of the admission of the colored delegates from Maryland, will not soon be forgotten by those who were present.

The doctor is also a prominent member of the Good Templars of Massachusetts. His efforts, in connection with his estimable wife, for the spread of temperance among the colored people of Boston, deserve the highest commendation.

Some five years ago, our author, in company with others, organized “The National Association for the Spread of Temperance and Night-schools among the Freed People at the South,” of which he is now president. This society is accomplishing great good among the freedmen.

It was while in the discharge of his duties of visiting the South, in 1871, and during his travels through the State of Kentucky, he became a victim of the Ku-Klux, and of which the following is the narrative:—

“I visited my native State in behalf of The National Association for the Spread of Temperance and Night-schools among the Freedmen, and had spoken to large numbers of them at Louisville, and other places, and was on my way to speak at Pleasureville, a place half-way between Louisville and Lexington. I arrived at Pleasureville dépôt a little after six in the evening, and was met by a colored man, who informed me that the meeting was to take place five miles in the country.

“After waiting some time for a team which was expected, we started on foot, thinking we would meet the vehicle. We walked on until dark overtook us, and seeing no team, I began to feel apprehensive that all was not right. The man with me, however, assured me that there was no danger, and went on. But we shortly after heard the trotting of horses, both in front and in the rear, and before I could determine what to do, we were surrounded by some eight or ten men, three of whom dismounted, bound my arms behind me with a cord, remounted their horses, and started on in the direction I had been travelling. The man who was with me disappeared while I was being tied. The men were not disguised, and talked freely among themselves.

“After going a mile or more they stopped, and consulted a moment or two, the purport of which I could not hear, except one of them saying,—‘Lawrence don’t want a nigger hung so near his place.’ They started again; I was on foot, a rope had been attached to my arms, and the other end to one of the horses. I had to hasten my steps to keep from being dragged along by the animal. Soon they turned to the right, and followed up what appeared to be a cow-path.

“While on this road my hat fell off, and I called out to the man behind and said, ‘I’ve lost my hat.’

“‘You’ll need no hat in half an hour’s time,’ he replied. As we were passing a log house on this road, a man came out and said, in a trembling voice, ‘Jim’s dying!’ All the men now dismounted, and, with the exception of two, they went into the building. I distinctly heard the cries, groans, and ravings of the sick man, which satisfied me at once that it was an extreme case of delirium tremens; and as I treated the malady successfully by the hypodermic remedy, and having with me the little instrument, the thought flashed upon my mind that I might save my life by the trial. Consequently, I said to one of the men,—‘I know what’s the matter with that man, and I can relieve him in ten minutes.’

“One of the men went into the house, related what I had said, and the company came out. The leader, whom they all addressed as ‘Cap,’ began to question me with regard to my skill in such complaints. He soon became satisfied, untied me, and we entered the sick man’s chamber. My hands were so numb from the tightness of the cord which bound my arms, that I walked up and down the room for some minutes, rubbing my hands, and contemplating the situation. The man lay upon a bed of straw, his arms and legs bound to the bedstead to keep him from injuring himself and others. He had, in his agony, bitten his tongue and lips, and his mouth was covered with bloody froth, while the glare of his eyes was fearful. His wife, the only woman in the house, sat near the bed with an infant upon her lap, her countenance pale and anxious, while the company of men seemed to be the most desperate set I had ever seen.

“I determined from the first to try to impress them with the idea that I had derived my power to relieve pain from some supernatural source. While I was thus thinking the matter over, ‘Cap’ was limping up and down the room, breathing an oath at nearly every step, and finally said to me,—‘Come, come, old boy, take hold lively; I want to get home, for this d—d old hip of mine is raising h—l with me.’ I said to them,—‘Now, gentlemen, I’ll give this man complete relief in less than ten minutes from the time I lay my hands on him; but I must be permitted to retire to a room alone, for I confess that I have dealings with the devil, and I must consult with him.’ Nothing so charms an ignorant people as something that has about it the appearance of superstition, and I did not want these men to see the syringe, or to know of its existence. The woman at once lighted a tallow candle, handed it to ‘Cap,’ and pointed to a small room. The man led the way, set the light down, and left me alone. I now took out my case, adjusted the needle to the syringe, filled it with a solution of the acetate of morphia, put the little instrument into my vest pocket, and returned to the room.

“After waving my hands in the air, I said,—‘Gentlemen, I want your aid; give it to me, and I’ll perform a cure that you’ll never forget. All of you look upon that man till I say, “Hold!” Look him right in the eye.’ All eyes were immediately turned upon the invalid. Having already taken my stand at the foot of the bed, I took hold of the right leg near the calf, pinched up the skin, inserted the needle, withdrew it after discharging the contents, slipped the syringe into my pocket, and cried at the top of my voice, ‘Hold!’ The men now turned to me, alternately viewing me and the sick man. From the moment that the injection took place, the ravings began to cease, and in less than ten minutes he was in perfect ease. I continued to wave my hands, and to tell the devils ‘to depart and leave this man in peace.’ ‘Cap’ was the first to break the silence, and he did it in an emphatic manner, for he gazed steadily at me, then at the sick man, and exclaimed,—‘Big thing! big thing, boys, d—d if it ain’t!’

“Another said,—‘A conjurer, by h—ll! you heard him say he deals with the devil.’ I now thought it time to try ‘Cap,’ for, from his limping, groaning, and swearing about his hip, it seemed to me a clear case of sciatica, and I thus informed him, giving him a description of its manner of attack and progress, detailing to him the different stages of suffering.

“I had early learned from the deference paid to the man by his associates, that he was their leader, and I was anxious to get my hands on him, for I had resolved that if ever I got him under the influence of the drug, he should never have an opportunity of putting a rope around my neck. ‘Cap’ was so pleased with my diagnosis of his complaint, that he said,—‘Well, I’ll give you a trial, d—d if I don’t!’ I informed him that I must be with him alone. The woman remarked that we could go in the adjoining room. As we left the company, one of them said: ‘You aint agoin’ to kill “Cap,” is you?’ ‘Oh, no!’ I replied. I said, ‘Now, “Cap,” I’ll cure you, but I need your aid.’ ‘Sir,’ returned he, ‘I’ll do anything you tell me.’ I told him to lay on the bed, shut his eyes, and count one hundred. He obeyed at once, and while he was counting, I was filling the syringe with the morphia.

“When he had finished counting, I informed him that I would have to pinch him on the lame leg, so as to get the devil out of it. ‘Oh!’ replied he, ‘you may pinch as much as you d—d please, for I’ve seen and felt h—ll with this old hip!’ I injected the morphia as I had done in the previous case, and began to sing a noted Methodist hymn as soon as I had finished. As the medicine took effect, the man went rapidly off into a slumber, from which he did not awake while I was there, for I had given him a double dose.

“I will here remark, that while the morphia will give most instant relief in sciatica, it seldom performs a perfect cure. But in both cases I knew it would serve my purpose. As soon as ‘Cap’ was safe, I called in his companions, who appeared still more amazed than at first. They held their faces to his to see that he breathed, and would shake their heads and go out. I told them that I should have to remain with the man five or six hours. At this announcement one of the company got furious, and said, ‘It’s all a trick to save his neck from the halter,’ and concluded by saying at the top of his voice, ‘Come to the tree, to the tree!’ The men all left the room, assembled in the yard, and had a consultation. It was now after eleven o’clock, and as they had a large flask of brandy with them they appeared to keep themselves well-filled, from the manner in which the room kept scented up. At this juncture one of the company, a tall, red-haired man, whose face was completely covered with beard, entered the room, took his seat at the table, drew out of his pocket a revolver, laid it on the table, and began to fill his mouth with tobacco. The men outside mounted their horses and rode away, one of whom distinctly shouted, ‘Remember, four o’clock.’ I continued to visit one and then the other of the invalids, feeling their pulse, and otherwise showing my interest in their recovery.

“The brandy appeared to have as salutary effect on the man at the table as the morphia had on the sick, for he was fast asleep in a few minutes. The only impediment in the way of my escape now was a large dog, which it was difficult to keep from me when I first came to the house, and was now barking, snapping, and growling, as if he had been trained to it.

“Many modes of escape suggested themselves to me while the time was thus passing, the most favored of which was to seize the revolver, rush out of the house, and run my chance with the dog. However, before I could put any of these suggestions into practice, the woman went out, called ‘Lion, Lion,’ and returned, followed by the dog, which she made lie down by her as she reseated herself. In a low whisper, this woman, whose fate deserves to be a better one, said,—‘They are going to hang you at four o’clock; now is your time to go.’ The clock was just striking two when I arose, and with a grateful look, left the house. Taking the road that I had come, and following it down, I found my hat, and after walking some distance out of the way by mistake, I reached the station, and took the morning train for Cincinnati.”

I cannot conclude this sketch of our author’s life without alluding to an incident which occurred at Aurora, my native town, on a visit to that place in the winter of 1844.

Dr. Brown was advertised to speak in the old church, which he found filled to overflowing, with an audience made up mostly of men who had previously determined that the meeting should not be held.

The time for opening the meeting had already arrived, and the speaker was introduced by my father, who acted as chairman.

The coughing, whistling, stamping of feet, and other noises made by the assemblage, showed the prejudice existing against the anti-slavery cause, the doctrines of which the speaker was there to advocate. This tumult lasted for half an hour or more, during which time unsalable eggs, peas, and other missiles were liberally thrown at the speaker.

One of the eggs took effect on the doctor’s face, spattering over his nicely-ironed shirt bosom, and giving him a somewhat ungainly appearance, which kept the audience in roars of laughter at the expense of our fugitive friend.

Becoming tired of this sort of fun, and getting his Southern blood fairly aroused, Dr. Brown, who, driven from the pulpit, was standing in front of the altar, nerved himself up, assumed a highly dramatic air, and said: “I shall not attempt to address you; no, I would not speak to you if you wanted me to. However, let me tell you one thing, and that is, if you had been in the South a slave as I was, none of you would ever have had the courage to escape; none but cowards would do as you have done here to-night.”

Dr. Brown gradually proceeded into a narrative of his own life and escape from the South. The intense interest connected with the various incidents as he related them, chained the audience to their seats, and for an hour and a half he spoke, making one of the most eloquent appeals ever heard in that section in behalf of his race.

I have often heard my father speak of it as an effort worthy of our greatest statesmen. Before the commencement of the meeting, the mob had obtained a bag of flour, taking it up into the belfry of the church, directly over the entrance door, with the intention of throwing it over the speaker as he should pass out.

One of the mob had been sent in with orders to keep as close to the doctor as he could, and who was to give the signal for the throwing of the flour. So great was the influence of the speaker on this man, that his opinions were changed, and instead of giving the word, he warned the doctor of the impending danger, saying,—“When you hear the cry of ‘let it slide,’ look out for the flour.” The fugitive had no sooner learned these facts than he determined to have a little fun at the expense of others.

Pressing his way forward, and getting near a group of the most respectable of the company, including two clergymen, a physician, and a justice of the peace, he moved along with them, and as they passed under the belfry, the doctor cried out at the top of his voice, “Let it slide!” when down came the flour upon the heads of some of our best citizens, which created the wildest excitement, and caused the arrest of those engaged in the disturbance.

Everybody regarded Dr. Brown’s aptness in this matter as a splendid joke; and for many days after, the watchword of the boys was, “Let it Slide!”

Dr. Brown wrote “The Negro in the Rebellion,” in 1866, which had a rapid sale.

THE RISING SON.

CHAPTER I. THE ETHIOPIANS AND EGYPTIANS.

The origin of the African race has provoked more criticism than any other of the various races of man on the globe. Speculation has exhausted itself in trying to account for the Negro’s color, features, and hair, that distinguish him in such a marked manner from the rest of the human family.

All reliable history, and all the facts which I have been able to gather upon this subject, show that the African race descended from the country of the Nile, and principally from Ethiopia.

The early history of Ethiopia is involved in great obscurity. When invaded by the Egyptians, it was found to contain a large population, consisting of savages, hunting and fishing tribes, wandering herdsmen, shepherds, and lastly, a civilized class, dwelling in houses and in large cities, possessing a government and laws, acquainted with the use of hieroglyphics, the fame of whose progress in knowledge and the social arts had, in the remotest ages, spread over a considerable portion of the earth. Even at that early period, when all the nations were in their rude and savage state, Ethiopia was full of historical monuments, erected chiefly on the banks of the Nile.

The earliest reliable information we have of Ethiopia, is (B. C. 971) when the rulers of that country assisted Shishank in his war against Judea, “with very many chariots and horsemen.” Sixteen years later, we have an account of Judea being again invaded by an army of a million Ethiopians, unaccompanied by any Egyptian force.[1] The Ethiopian power gradually increased until its monarchs were enabled to conquer Egypt, where three of them reigned in succession, Sabbackon, Sevechus, and Tarakus, the Tirhakah of Scripture.[2]

Sevechus, called so in Scripture, was so powerful a monarch that Hoshed, king of Israel, revolted against the Assyrians, relying on his assistance,[3] but was not supported by his ally. This indeed, was the immediate cause of the captivity of the Ten Tribes; for “in the ninth year of Hoshed the king, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria,” as a punishment for unsuccessful rebellion.

Tirhakah was a more war-like prince; he led an army against Sennacherib,[4] king of Assyria, then besieging Jerusalem; and the Egyptian traditions, preserved in the age of Herodotus, give an accurate account of the providential interposition by which the pride of the Assyrians was humbled.

It is said that the kings of Ethiopia were always elected from the priestly caste; and there was a strange custom for the electors, when weary of their sovereign, to send him a courier with orders to die. Ergamenes was the first monarch who ventured to resist this absurd custom; he lived in the reign of the second Ptolemy, and was instructed in Grecian philosophy. So far from yielding, he marched against the fortress of the priests, massacred most of them, and instituted a new religion.

Queens frequently ruled in Ethiopia; one named Candace made war on Augustus Cæsar, about twenty years before the birth of Christ, and though not successful, obtained peace on very favorable conditions.

The pyramids of Ethiopia, though inferior in size to those in Egypt, are said to surpass them in architectural beauty, and the sepulchres evince the greatest purity of taste.

But the most important and striking proof of the progress of the Ethiopians in the art of building, is their knowledge and employment of the arch. Hoskins has stated that their pyramids are of superior antiquity to those of Egypt. The Ethiopian vases depicted on the monuments, though not richly ornamented, display a taste and elegance of form that has never been surpassed. In sculpture and coloring, the edifices of Ethiopia, though not so profusely adorned, rival the choicest specimens of Egyptian art.

Meroe was the entrepot of trade between the North and the South, between the East and the West, while its fertile soil enabled the Ethiopians to purchase foreign luxuries with native productions. It does not appear that fabrics were woven in Ethiopia so extensively as in Egypt; but the manufacture of metal must have been at least as flourishing.

But Ethiopia owed its greatness less to the produce of its soil or its factories than to its position on the intersection of the leading caravan routes of ancient commerce.

The Ethiopians were among the first nations that organized a regular army, and thus laid the foundation of the whole system of ancient warfare. A brief account of their military affairs will therefore illustrate not only their history, but that of the great Asiatic monarchies, and of the Greeks during the heroic ages. The most important division of an Ethiopian army was the body of war-chariots, used instead of cavalry. These chariots were mounted on two wheels and made low; open behind, so that the warrior could easily step in and out; and without a seat.

They were drawn by two horses and generally contained two warriors, one of whom managed the steeds while the other fought. Nations were distinguished from each other by the shape and color of their chariots.

Great care was taken in the manufacturing of the chariots and also of the breeding of horses to draw them. Nothing in our time can equal the attention paid by the ancients in the training of horses for the battle-field.

The harness which these animals wore was richly decorated; and a quiver and bow-case, decorated with extraordinary taste and skill, were securely fixed to the side of each chariot. The bow was the national weapon, employed by both cavalry and infantry. No nation of antiquity paid more attention to archery than the Ethiopians; their arrows better aimed than those of any other nation, the Egyptians perhaps excepted. The children of the warrior caste were trained from early infancy to the practice of archery.

The arms of the Ethiopians were a spear, a dagger, a short sword, a helmet, and a shield. Pole-axes and battle-axes were occasionally used. Coats of mail were used only by the principal officers, and some remarkable warriors, like Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. The light troops were armed with swords, battle-axes, maces, and clubs. Some idea of the manly forms, great strength, and military training of the Ethiopians, may be gathered from Herodotus, the father of ancient history.

After describing Arabia as “a land exhaling the most delicious fragrance,” he says,—“Ethiopia, which is the extremity of the habitable world, is contiguous to this country on the south-west. Its inhabitants are very remarkable for their size, their beauty, and their length of life.”[5]

In his third book he has a detailed description of a single tribe of this interesting people, called the Macrobian, or long-lived Ethiopians. Cambyses, the Persian king, had made war upon Egypt, and subdued it. He is then seized with an ambition of extending his conquests still farther, and resolves to make war upon the Ethiopians. But before undertaking his expedition, he sends spies into the country disguised as friendly ambassadors, who carry costly presents from Cambyses. They arrive at the court of the Ethiopian prince, “a man superior to all others in the perfection of size and beauty,” who sees through their disguise, and takes down a bow of such enormous size that no Persian could bend it. “Give your king this bow, and in my name speak to him thus:—

“‘The king of Ethiopia sends this counsel to the king of Persia. When his subjects shall be able to bend this bow with the same ease that I do, then let him venture to attack the long-lived Ethiopians. Meanwhile, let him be thankful to the gods, that the Ethiopians have not been inspired with the same love of conquest as himself.’”[6]

Homer wrote at least eight hundred years before Christ, and his poems are well ascertained to be a most faithful mirror of the manners and customs of his times, and the knowledge of his age.

In the first book of the Iliad, Achilles is represented as imploring his goddess-mother to intercede with Jove in behalf of her aggrieved son. She grants his request, but tells him the intercession must be delayed for twelve days. The gods are absent. They have gone to the distant climes of Ethiopia to join in its festal rites. “Yesterday Jupiter went to the feast with the blameless Ethiopians, away upon the limits of the ocean, and all the gods followed together.”[7] Homer never wastes an epithet. He often alludes to the Ethiopians elsewhere, and always in terms of admiration and praise, as being the most just of men; the favorites of the gods.[8]

The same allusion glimmers through the Greek mythology, and appears in the verses of almost all the Greek poets ere the countries of Italy and Sicily were even discovered. The Jewish Scripture and Jewish literature abound in allusion to this distinct and mysterious people; the annals of the Egyptian priests are full of them, uniformly the Ethiopians are there lauded as among the best, most religious, and most civilized of men.[9]

Let us pause here one moment, and follow the march of civilization into Europe. Wherever its light has once burned clearly, it has been diffused, but not extinguished. Every one knows that Rome got her civilization from Greece; that Greece again borrowed hers from Egypt, that thence she derived her earliest science and the forms of her beautiful mythology.

The mythology of Homer is evidently hieroglyphical in its origin, and has strong marks of family resemblance to the symbolical worship of Egypt.

It descended the Nile; it spread over the delta of that river, as it came down from Thebes, the wonderful city of a hundred gates. Thebes, as every scholar knows, is more ancient than the cities of the delta. The ruins of the colossal architecture are covered over with hieroglyphics, and strewn with the monuments of Egyptian mythology. But whence came Thebes? It was built and settled by colonies from Ethiopia, or from cities which were themselves the settlements of that nation. The higher we ascend the Nile, the more ancient are the ruins on which we tread, till we come to the “hoary Meroe,” which Egypt acknowledged to be the cradle of her institutions.

But Meroe was the queenly city of Ethiopia, into which all Africa poured its caravans laden with ivory, frankincense, and gold. So it is that we trace the light of Ethiopian civilization first into Egypt, thence into Greece, and Rome, whence, gathering new splendor on its way, it hath been diffusing itself all the world over.[10]

We now come to a consideration of the color of the Ethiopians, that distinguish their descendants of the present time in such a marked manner from the rest of the human race.

Adam, the father of the human family, took his name from the color of the earth from which he was made.[11]

The Bible says but little with regard to the color of the various races of man, and absolutely nothing as to the time when or the reasons why these varieties were introduced. There are a few passages in which color is descriptive of the person or the dress. Job said, “My skin is black upon me.” Job had been sick for a long time, and no doubt this brought about a change in his complexion. In Lamentations, it is said, “Their visage is blacker than a coal;” also, “our skin was blacker than an oven.” Both of these writers, in all probability, had reference to the change of color produced by the famine. Another writer says, “I am black, but comely.” This may have been a shepherd, and lying much in the sun might have caused the change.

However, we now have the testimony of one whom we clearly understand, and which is of the utmost importance in settling this question. Jeremiah asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” This refers to a people whose color is peculiar, fixed, and unalterable. Indeed, Jeremiah seems to have been as well satisfied that the Ethiopian was colored, as he was that the leopard had spots; and that the one was as indelible as the other. The German translation of Luther has “Negro-land,” for Ethiopia, i. e., the country of the blacks.

All reliable history favors the belief that the Ethiopians descended from Cush, the eldest son of Ham, who settled first in Shina in Asia. Eusebius informs us that a colony of Asiatic Cushites settled in that part of Africa which has since been known as Ethiopia proper. Josephus asserts that these Ethiopians were descended from Cush, and that in his time they were still called Cushites by themselves and by the inhabitants of Asia. Homer divides the Ethiopians into two parts, and Strabo, the geographer, asserts that the dividing line to which he alluded was the Red Sea. The Cushites emigrated in part to the west of the Red Sea; these, remaining unmixed with other races, engrossed the general name of Cushite, or Ethiopian, while the Asiatic Cushites became largely mingled with other nations, and are nearly or quite absorbed, or, as a distinct people well-nigh extinct. Hence, from the allusion of Jeremiah to the skin of the Ethiopian, confirmed and explained by such authorities as Homer, Strabo, Herodotus, Josephus, and Eusebius, we conclude that the Ethiopians were an African branch of the Cushites who settled first in Asia. Ethiop, in the Greek, means “sunburn,” and there is not the slightest doubt but that these people, in and around Meroe, took their color from the climate. This theory does not at all conflict with that of the common origin of man. Although the descendants of Cush were black, it does not follow that all the offspring of Ham were dark-skinned; but only those who settled in a climate that altered their color.

The word of God by his servant Paul has settled forever the question of the equal origin of the human races, and it will stand good against all scientific research. “God hath made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

The Ethiopians are not constitutionally different from the rest of the human family, and therefore, we must insist upon unity, although we see and admit the variety.

Some writers have endeavored to account for this difference of color, by connecting it with the curse pronounced upon Cain. This theory, however, has no foundation; for if Cain was the progenitor of Noah, and if Cain’s new peculiarities were perpetuated, then, as Noah was the father of the world’s new population, the question would be, not how to account for any of the human family being black, but how can we account for any being white? All this speculation as to the change of Cain’s color, as a theory for accounting for the variety peculiar to Cush and the Ethiopians, falls to the ground when we trace back the genealogy of Noah, and find that he descended not from Cain, but from Seth.

Of course Cain’s descendants, no matter what their color, became extinct at the flood. No miracle was needed in Ethiopia to bring about a change in the color of its inhabitants. The very fact that the nation derived its name from the climate should be enough to satisfy the most skeptical. What was true of the Ethiopians was also true of the Egyptians, with regard to color; for Herodotus tells us that the latter were colored and had curled hair.

The vast increase of the population of Ethiopia, and a wish of its rulers to possess more territory, induced them to send expeditions down the Nile, and towards the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of these adventurers, as early as B. C. 885, took up their abode on the Mediterranean coast, and founded the place which in later years became the great city of Carthage. Necho, king of Egypt, a man distinguished for his spirit of enterprise, sent an expedition (B. C. 616) around the African coast. He employed Phœnecian navigators. This fleet sailed down the Red Sea, passed the straits of Balel-Mandeb, and, coasting the African continent, discovered the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, two thousand years before its re-discovery by Dias and Vasco de Gama. This expedition was three years in its researches, and while gone, got out of food, landed, planted corn, and waited for the crop. After harvesting the grain, they proceeded on their voyage. The fleet returned to Egypt through the Atlantic Ocean, the straits of Gibralter, and the Mediterranean.

The glowing accounts brought back by the returned navigators of the abundance of fruits, vegetables, and the splendor of the climate of the new country, kindled the fire of adventurous enthusiasm in the Ethiopians, and they soon followed the example set them by the Egyptians. Henceforward, streams of emigrants were passing over the Isthmus of Suez, that high road to Africa, who became permanent residents of the promised land.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 2 Chron. xiv: 8-13.

[2] Hawkins, in his work on Meroe, identifies Tirhakah with the priest Sethos, upon ground, we think, not tenable.

[3] 2 Kings, xvii: 4.

[4] 2 Kings, xix: 9.

[5] Herod. iii: 114.

[6] Herod iii: 21.

[7] Iliad II: 423.

[8] Iliad XXIII.

[9] Chron. xiv: 9; xvi: 8; Isaiah xlv: 14; Jeremiah xlvi: 9; Josephus Aut. II; Heeren, vol I: p. 290.

[10] E. H. Sears, in the “Christian Examiner,” July, 1846.

[11] Josephus Ant., Vol. I: p. 8.

CHAPTER II. THE CARTHAGINIANS.

Although it is claimed in history that Carthage was settled by the Phœnecians, or emigrants from Tyre, it is by no means an established fact; for when Dido fled from her haughty and tyrannical brother, Pygmalion, ruler of Tyre, and sailing down the Nile, seeking a place of protection, she halted at Carthage, then an insignificant settlement on a peninsula in the interior of a large bay, now called the gulf of Tunis, on the northern shore of Africa (this was B. C. 880), the population was made up mainly of poor people, the larger portion of whom were from Ethiopia, and the surrounding country. Many outlaws, murderers, highwaymen, and pirates, had taken refuge in the new settlement. Made up of every conceivable shade of society, with but little character to lose, the Carthaginians gladly welcomed Dido, coming as she did from the royal house of Tyre, and they adopted her as the head of their government. The people became law-abiding, and the constitution which they adopted was considered by the ancients as a pattern of political wisdom. Aristotle highly praises it as a model to other States. He informs us that during the space of five centuries, that is, from the foundation of the republic down to his own time, no tyrant had overturned the liberties of the State, and no demagogue had stirred up the people to rebellion. By the wisdom of its laws, Carthage had been able to avoid the opposite evils of aristocracy on the one hand, and democracy on the other. The nobles did not engross the whole of the power, as was the case in Sparta, Corinth, and Rome, and in more modern times, in Venice; nor did the people exhibit the factious spirit of an Athenian mob, or the ferocious cruelty of a Roman rabble.

After the tragical death of the Princess Dido, the head of the government consisted of the suffetes, two chief magistrates, somewhat resembling the consuls of Rome, who presided in the senate, and whose authority extended to military as well as civil affairs. These officers appeared to be entirely devoted to the good of the State and the welfare of the people.

The second was the senate itself, composed of illustrious men of the State. This body made the laws, declared war, negotiated peace, and appointed to all offices, civil and military. The third estate was still more popular. In the infancy and maturity of the republic, the people had taken no active part in the government; but, at a later period, influenced by wealth and prosperity, they advanced their claims to authority, and, before long, obtained nearly the whole power. They instituted a council, designed as a check upon the nobles and the senate. This council was at first very beneficial to the State, but afterwards became itself tyrannical.

The Carthaginians were an enterprising people, and in the course of time built ships, and with them explored all ports of the Mediterranean Sea, visiting the nations on the coast, purchasing their commodities, and selling them to others. Their navigators went to the coast of Guinea, and even advanced beyond the mouths of the Senegal and the Gambia. The Carthaginians carried their commerce into Spain, seized a portion of that country containing mines rich with gold, and built thereon a city which they called New Carthage, and which to the present day is known as Carthaginia.

The Mediterranean was soon covered with their fleets, and at a time when Rome could not boast of a single vessel, and her citizens were entirely ignorant of the form of a ship. The Carthaginians conquered Sardinia, and a great part of Sicily. Their powerful fleets and extensive conquests gave them the sovereign command of the seas.

While Carthage possessed the dominion of the seas, a rival State was growing up on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, distant about seven hundred miles, under whose arms she was destined to fall. This was Rome, the foundation of which was commenced one hundred years after that of Carthage. These two powerful nations engaged in wars against each other that lasted nearly two hundred years. In these conflicts the Carthaginians showed great bravery.

In the first Punic war, the defeat and capture of Regulus, the Roman general, by the Carthaginians, and their allies, the Greeks, humiliated the Romans, and for a time gave the former great advantage over the latter. The war, however, which lasted twenty-four years, was concluded by some agreement, which after all, was favorable to the Romans. The conclusion of the first Punic war (B. C. 249) was not satisfactory to the more republican portion of the ruling spirits among the Carthaginians, and especially Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, who, at that time occupied a very prominent position, both on account of his rank, wealth, and high family connections at Carthage; also on account of the great military energy which he displayed in the command of the armies abroad. Hamilcar had carried on the wars which the Carthaginians waged in Africa and Spain after the conclusion of the war with the Romans, and he was anxious to begin hostilities with the Romans again. On Hamilcar’s leaving Carthage the last time to join his army in Spain, he took his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years, and made him swear on the altar of his country eternal hatred to the Romans, an oath that he kept to the day of his death.

When not yet twenty years of age, Hannibal was placed second in command of the army, then in Spain, where he at once attracted the attention and the admiration of all, by the plainness of his living, his abstinence from strong drink, and the gentlemanly treatment that he meted out to the soldiers, as well as his fellow-officers.

He slept in his military cloak on the ground, in the midst of his soldiers on guard; and in a battle he was always the last to leave the field after a fight, as he was foremost to press forward in every contest with the enemy. The death of Hasdrubal placed Hannibal in supreme command of the army, and inheriting his father’s hatred to Rome, he resolved to take revenge upon his ancient enemy, and at once invaded the Roman possessions in Spain, and laid siege to the city of Saguntum, which, after heroic resistance, yielded to his victorious arms. Thus commenced the second Punic war, in which Hannibal was to show to the world his genius as a general.

Leaving a large force in Africa, and also in Spain, to defend these points, Hannibal set out in the spring of the year B. C. 218, with a large army to fulfill his project against Rome.

His course lay along the Mediterranean; the whole distance to Rome being about one thousand miles by the land route which he contemplated. When he had traversed Spain, he came to the Pyrenees, a range of mountains separating that country from Gaul, now France. He was here attacked by wild tribes of brave barbarians, but he easily drove them back. He crossed the Pyrenees, traversed Gaul, and came at last to the Alps, which threw up their frowning battlements, interposing a formidable obstacle between him and the object of his expedition.

No warrior had then crossed these snowy peaks with such an army; and none but a man of that degree of resolution and self-reliance which could not be baffled, would have hazarded the fearful enterprise. Indeed, we turn with amazement to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; that great and daring feat surpasses in magnitude anything of the kind ever attempted by man. The pride of the French historians have often led them to compare Napoleon’s passage of the Great St. Bernard to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French Emperor, it may safely be affirmed that his achievements will bear no comparison whatever with the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, and above the Lake of Geneva, he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was traversed by great numbers of both at every season of the year.

Comfortable villages on the ascent and descent afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers by day and by night; the ample stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of the French generals had provided a meal for every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage; the guns were drawn up in sleds made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po.

The mountain sides, which had not yet been cleared by centuries of laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents. There were no bridges to cross the perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been hidden away by the natives, and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valor the gates of their country, and when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal’s soldiers, still beset the ridges about their line of march, and harassed his troops with continual hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged in the open mountain pastures, which led to the verge of perpetual snow, fresh difficulties awaited them.

The turf, from the gliding down of the newly-fallen snow on those steep declivities, was so slippery that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abyss beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privation and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers, worn out by incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors formidable to all, but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the summit.

It was the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides, silent and melancholy even at the height of summer, when enameled with flowers and dotted with flocks, presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the lakes which were interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose at all sides, presenting an apparently impassable barrier to their further progress. But it was then that the genius of Hannibal shone forth in all its lustre.

“The great general,” says Arnold, “who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts of Italy, and that the torrent which rolled before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of cisalpine Gaul, endeavored to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he pointed out to them the valley beneath, to which the descent seemed but the work of a moment.

“That valley,” said he, “is Italy; it leads to the country of our friends, the Gauls, and yonder is our way to Rome.” His eyes were eagerly fixed on that part of the horizon, and as he gazed, the distance seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy he was crossing the Tiber, and assailing the capital. Such were the difficulties of the passage and the descent on the other side, that Hannibal lost thirty-three thousand men from the time he entered the Pyrenees till he reached the plains of Northern Italy, and he arrived on the Po with only twelve thousand Africans, eight thousand Spanish infantry, and six thousand horse.

Then followed those splendid battles with the Romans, which carried consternation to their capital, and raised the great general to the highest pinnacle in the niche of military fame.

The defeat of Scipio, at the battle of Ticinus, the utter rout and defeat of Sempronius, the defeat of Flaminius, the defeat of Fabius, and the battle of Cannæ, in the last of which, the Romans had seventy-six thousand foot, eight thousand horse, and many chariots, and where Hannibal had only thirty thousand troops, all told, and where the defeat was so complete that bushels of gold rings were taken from the fingers of the dead Romans, and sent as trophies to Carthage, are matters of history, and will ever give to Hannibal the highest position in the scale of ancient military men. Hannibal crossed the Alps two hundred and seventeen years before the Christian Era, and remained in Italy sixteen years. At last, Scipio, a Roman general of the same name of the one defeated by Hannibal at Ticinus, finished the war in Spain, transported his troops across the Mediterranean; thus “carrying the war into Africa,” and giving rise to an expression still in vogue, and significant of effective retaliation. By the aid of Masinissa, a powerful prince of Numidia, now Morocco, he gained two victories over the Carthaginians, who were obliged to recall Hannibal from Italy, to defend their own soil from the combined attacks of the Romans and Numidians.

He landed at Leptis, and advanced near Zama, five days’ journey to the west of Carthage. Here he met the Roman forces, and here, for the first time, he suffered a total defeat. The loss of the Carthaginians was immense, and they were compelled to sue for peace. This was granted by Scipio, but upon humiliating terms.

Hannibal would still have resisted, but he was compelled by his countrymen to submit. Thus ended the second Punic war (B. C. 200), having continued about eighteen years.

By this war with the Romans, the Carthaginians lost most of their colonies, and became in a measure, a Roman province. Notwithstanding his late reverses, Hannibal entered the Carthaginian senate, and continued at the head of the state, reforming abuses that had crept into the management of the finances, and the administration of justice. But these judicious reforms provoked the enmity of the factious nobles who had hitherto been permitted to fatten on public plunder; they joined with the old rivals of the Barcan family, of which Hannibal was now the acknowledged head, and even degraded themselves so far as to act as spies for the Romans, who still dreaded the abilities of the great general.

In consequence of their machinations, the old hero was forced to fly from the country he had so long labored to serve; and after several vicissitudes, died of poison, to escape the mean and malignant persecution of the Romans whose hatred followed him in his exile, and compelled the king of Bithynia to refuse him protection. The mound which marks his last resting-place is still a remarkable object.

Hannibal, like the rest of the Carthaginians, though not as black as the present African population, was nevertheless, colored; not differing in complexion from the ancient Ethiopians, and with curly hair. We have but little account of this wonderful man except from his enemies, the Romans, and nothing from them but his public career. Prejudiced as are these sources of evidence, they still exhibit him as one of the most extraordinary men that have ever lived.

Many of the events of his life remind us of the career of Napoleon. Like him, he crossed the Alps with a great army; like him, he was repeatedly victorious over disciplined and powerful forces in Italy; like him, he was finally overwhelmed in a great battle; like him, he was a statesman, as well as a general; like him, he was the idol of the army; like him, he was finally driven from his country, and died in exile.[12] Yet, no one of Napoleon’s achievements was equal to that of Hannibal in crossing the Alps, if we consider the difficulties he had to encounter; nor has anything in generalship surpassed the ability he displayed in sustaining himself and his army for sixteen years in Italy, in the face of Rome, and without asking for assistance from his own country.

We now pass to the destruction of Carthage, and the dispersion of its inhabitants. Fifty years had intervened since Hannibal with his victorious legions stood at the gates of Rome; the Carthaginian territory had been greatly reduced, the army had witnessed many changes, Hannibal and his generals were dead, and a Roman army under Scipio, flushed with victory and anxious for booty, were at the gates of Carthage.

For half a century the Carthaginians had faithfully kept all their humiliating treaties with the Romans; borne patiently the insults and arrogance of Masinissa, king of Numidia, whose impositions on Carthage were always upheld by the strong arm of Rome; at last, however, a serious difficulty arose between Carthage and Numidia, for the settlement of which the Roman senate dispatched commissioners to visit the contending parties and report.

Unfortunately for the Carthaginians, one of these commissioners was Cato the elder, who had long entertained a determined hatred to Carthage. Indeed, he had, for the preceding twenty years, scarcely ever made a speech without closing with,—“Delenda est Carthago.”—Carthage must be destroyed. Animated by this spirit, it can easily be imagined that Cato would give the weight of his influence against the Carthaginians in everything touching their interest.

While inspecting the great city, Cato was struck with its magnificence and remaining wealth, which strengthened him in the opinion that the ultimate success of Rome depended upon the destruction of Carthage; and he labored to bring about that result.

Scipio demanded that Carthage should deliver up all its materials of war as a token of submission, which demand was complied with; and the contents of their magazines, consisting of two hundred thousand complete suits of armor, two thousand catapults, and an immense number of spears, swords, bows and arrows. Having disarmed themselves, they waited to hear the final sentence. The next demand was for the delivery of the navy; this too was complied with. It was then announced that the city was to be razed to the ground, the inhabitants sent elsewhere for a residence, and that the Carthaginian name was to be blotted out. Just then the navy, the largest in the world, containing vessels of great strength and beauty, was set on fire, the flames of which lighted up with appalling effect the coast forty miles around.

The destruction of this fleet, the naval accumulation of five centuries, was a severe blow to the pride of the conquered Carthaginians, and taking courage from despair, they closed the gates of the city, and resolved that they would fight to the last.

As in all commonwealths, there were two political parties in Carthage, struggling for the ascendency; one, republican, devoted to the liberty of the people and the welfare of the State; the other, conservative in its character, and in favor of Roman rule. It was this last party that had disarmed the State at the bidding of the Roman invaders; and now that the people had risen, the conservatives who could, fled from the city, to escape the indignation of the masses.

Unarmed and surrounded by an army of one hundred thousand men, resistance seemed to be madness; yet they resisted with a heroism that surprised and won the esteem of their hard-hearted conquerors.

Everything was done to repair the damage already sustained by the surrender of their navy and munitions of war. The pavements of the streets were torn up, houses demolished, and statues broken to pieces to obtain stones for weapons, which were carried upon the ramparts for defence. Everybody that could work at a forge was employed in manufacturing swords, spear-heads, pikes, and such other weapons as could be made with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all the iron and brass that could be obtained, then melted down vases, statues, and the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior pointing of silver and gold.

When the supply of hemp and twine for cordage for their bows had failed, the young maidens cut off their hair, and twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for propelling the arrows which their husbands and brothers made. Nothing in the history of war, either ancient or modern, will bear a comparison with this, the last struggle of the Carthaginians. The siege thus begun was carried on more than two years; the people, driven to the last limit of human endurance, had aroused themselves to a hopeless resistance in a sort of frenzy of despair, and fought with a courage and a desperation that compelled the Romans to send home for more troops.

Think of a walled city, thirty miles in circumference, with a population of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls, men, women, and children, living on limited fare, threatened with starvation, and surrounded by the sick, the dying, and the dead!

Even in this condition, so heroic were the Carthaginians, that they repulsed the Romans, sent fireships against the invaders’ fleet, burned their vessels, and would have destroyed the Roman army, had it not been for the skill of Scipio, who succeeded in covering the retreat of the Roman legions with a body of cavalry.

On the arrival of fresh troops from Rome, the siege was renewed; and after a war of three years, famine reduced the population to a little more than fifty thousand.

The overpowering army of Scipio finally succeeded in breaking through the gates, and gaining admission into the city; the opposing forces fought from street to street, the Carthaginians retreating as the Romans advanced. One band of the enemy’s soldiers mounted to the tops of the houses, the roofs of which were flat, and fought their way there, while another column moved around to cut off retreat to the citadel. No imagination can conceive the uproar and din of such an assault upon a populous city—a horrid mingling of the vociferated commands of the officers, and the shouts of the advancing and victorious enemy, with the screams of terror from affrighted women and children, and the dreadful groans and imprecations from men dying maddened with unsatisfied revenge, and biting the dust in agony of despair.[13]

The more determined of the soldiers with Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian general at their head, together with many brave citizens of both sexes, and some Roman deserters, took possession of the citadel, which was in a strongly-fortified section of the city.

The Romans advanced to the walls of this fortification, and set that part of the city on fire that lay nearest to it; the fire burned for six days. When the fire had ceased burning near the citadel, the Roman troops were brought to the area thus left vacant by the flames, and the fight was renewed.

Seeing there was no hope of successfully resisting the enemy, Hasdrubal opened the gates, and surrendered to the Romans. There was, however, a temple in the citadel, capable of holding ten or fifteen thousand persons; in this, many of the brave men and women took refuge; among these were Hasdrubal’s wife and two children. The gates of the temple had scarcely been closed and securely barred, ere some one set the building on fire from within. Half-suffocated with the smoke, and scorched with the flames, these people were soon running to and fro with the wildest screams; many of whom reached the roof, and among them, Hasdrubal’s wife.

Looking down and seeing her husband standing amongst the Roman officers, she loaded him with reproaches for what she conceived to be his cowardice, stabbed her children, threw them into the flames, and leaped in herself. The city was given up to pillage, and set on fire. After burning for seventeen days, this great city, the model of beauty and magnificence, the repository of immense wealth, and one of the chief States of the ancient world, was no more. The destruction of Carthage, previously resolved upon in cold blood, after fifty years of peace, and without any fresh provocation from the defenceless people, who had thrown themselves on the generosity of their rivals, was one of the most hard-hearted and brutal acts of Roman policy. The sequel of the history of Carthage presents a melancholy and affecting picture of the humiliation and decline of a proud and powerful State.

Meroe, the chief city, and fountain-head of the Ethiopians, was already fast declining, when Carthage fell, and from that time forward, the destiny of this people appeared to be downward. With the fall of Carthage, and the absorption of its territory by Rome, and its organization into a Roman province, the Carthaginian State ceased. Of the seven hundred and fifty thousand souls that Carthage contained at the time that the Romans laid siege to the city, only fifty thousand remained alive at its fall. The majority of these, hating Roman rule, bent their way towards the interior of Africa, following the thousands of their countrymen who had gone before.

After Carthage had been destroyed, the Romans did everything in their power to obliterate every vestige of the history of that celebrated people. No relics are to be seen of the grandeur and magnificence of ancient Carthage, except some ruins of aqueducts and cisterns.

In the language of Tasso:—

FOOTNOTES:

[12] “Famous Men of Ancient Times,” p. 154.

[13] “Abbott’s History of Hannibal.”

CHAPTER III. EASTERN AFRICA.

In the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, and among that range of mountains running parallel with the coast, are Hadharebe, the Ababdeh, and the Bishari, three very ancient tribes, the modern representatives of the Ethiopians of Meroe. The language of these people, their features, so different from the Arabs, and the Guinea Negro, together with their architecture, prove conclusively that they descended from Ethiopia; the most numerous and powerful of these tribes being the Bishari.

Leaving the shores of the Mediterranean, and passing south of Abyssinia, along the coast of Africa, and extending far into the interior over rich mountain-plains, is found the seat of what are called the “Galla nations.” They are nomadic tribes, vast in numbers, indefinable in their extent of territory, full of fire and energy, wealthy in flocks and herds, dark-skinned, woolly-haired, and thick-lipped.

Passing farther west into that vast region which lies between the Mountains of the Moon and the Great Desert, extending through Central Africa even to the western coast, we come into what may be more appropriately called “Negro-land.”

It is a widely-extended region, which abounds in the arts of civilization. Here are large cities containing from ten thousand to thirty thousand souls. Here is a great family of nations, some but just emerging out of barbarism, some formed into prosperous communities, preserving the forms of social justice and of a more enlightened worship, practicing agriculture, and exhibiting the pleasing results of peaceful and productive industry.

Mungo Park gives a glowing account of Sego, the capital of Bambuwa, a city containing thirty thousand inhabitants, with its two-story houses, its mosques seen in every quarter, its ferries conveying men and horses over the Niger. “The view of this extensive city,” he says, “the numerous canoes upon the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.”

Farther east he found a large and flourishing town called Kaffa, situated in the midst of a country so beautiful and highly cultivated that it reminds him of England. The people in this place were an admixture of light brown, dark brown, and dingy black, apparently showing the influence of the climate upon their ancestors.

The Mountains of the Moon, as they terminate along the western coast of Africa, spread out into a succession of mountain plains. These present three lofty fronts toward the sea, each surrounded with terraces, declining gradually into the lowlands, each threaded with fertilizing streams, and fanned with ocean breezes.

The most northern of these plateaus, with their declivities and plains, forms the delightful land of one of the most powerful and intelligent of the African tribes, namely, the Mandingoes. They are made up of shrewd merchants and industrious agriculturists; kind, hospitable, enterprising, with generous dispositions, and open and gentle manners. Not far from the Mandingoes, are the people called Solofs, whom Park describes as “the most beautiful, and at the same time the blackest people in Africa.”

But perhaps the most remarkable people among these nations are the “Fulahs,” whose native seat is the southern part of the plateaus above described. Here, in their lofty independence, they cultivate the soil, live in “clean and commodious dwellings,” feed numerous flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of oxen and horses, build mosques for the worship of one God, and open schools for the education of their children.

Timbri, their capital, is a military station, containing nine thousand inhabitants, from which their victorious armies have gone forth and subdued the surrounding country. They practice the mechanic arts with success, forge iron and silver, fabricate cloth, and work skilfully with leather and wood. Like the Anglo-Saxon, their capital has been the hive whence colonies have swarmed forth to form new settlements, and extend the arts of industry; and the “Fellatahs,” an enterprising people who dwell a thousand miles in the interior, are well known to belong to the same stock.

There are many other nations, or rather, tribes, in this vast central region, described by Pritchard more or less minutely, variously advanced in the arts of life, and exhibiting various degrees of enterprise and energy.

Passing along the western shore southward, we next come to the coast of Guinea, where we find the Negro in his worst state of degradation. Hither comes the slave-trader for his wretched cargo, and hence have been exported the victims of that horrible commerce, which supplied the slave-marts of the western world. The demonizing influence of this traffic on the character of the natives defies all description.

In the mountains and ravines of this portion of Africa lurk gangs of robbers, ever on the watch to seize the wives and children of the neighboring clans and sell them to the traders. Every corner of the land has been the scene of rapine and blood. Parents sell their children, and children sell their parents. Such are the passions stimulated by Christian gold, and such the state of society produced by contact with Christian nations. These people, degraded and unhumanized by the slaver, are the progenitors of the black population of the Southern States of the American Union.

Still we are to observe, that though the lowest type of Negro character is to be found on the Guinea coast and the adjacent region, it is not uniformly degraded. Tribes are to be found, considerably advanced in civilization, whose features and characters resemble those of the central region which we have just described.

Passing southward still farther, and crossing the line, we come into southern Africa. This whole region from the equator to the Cape, with the exception of the Hottentots, is, so far as discovered, occupied by what is called the “Great South African Race.” They are a vast family of nations, speaking dialects of the same language, furnishing incontrovertible evidence, so says Pritchard, of “a common origin.”

There is one fact, in reference to them, of absorbing interest; it is that among these nations, and sometimes among the same tribe, are found specimens of the lowest Negro type, and specimens of the same type elevated and transfigured so as to approximate far towards the European form and features. Between these two there is every possible variety, and the variations depend much on moral condition and physical surroundings. Along the coast humanity generally sinks down into its lowest shapes, and puts on its most disgusting visage.

Rising into the interior, and climbing the tablelands, the evidence of decided improvement generally appears. Perhaps the most savage of these tribes is to be found on the coast of Congo. They are cannibals of great ferocity and brutality. But on the eastern coast are found a people called Kafirs, some tribes occupying the coast, and a few the mountain plains. Some of these tribes, “whose fine forms and easy attitudes remind the traveller of ancient statues,” inhabit large towns and cities, have made great progress in the arts of industry, cultivate vast fields of sugar and tobacco, manufacture various kinds of cutlery, and “build their houses with masonry, and ornament them with pillars and mouldings.”

They exhibit fine traits of intellectual and moral character. Mixed up with their superstitions, they have some lofty, religious ideas; believe in the immortality of the soul, in a Supreme Being, whom they call “The Beautiful,” who exercises a providence over mankind. Such are the nations of Central and Southern Africa; and if we can rely on the reports of the best travellers, they furnish some of the best material, out of which to build up prosperous states and empires, that is to be found on the face of the earth.

We come next to the Hottentots, including the Bushmen, who belong to the same race. In the scale of humanity, he probably sinks below the inhabitants of Guinea or Congo.

The Hottentot has long furnished a standard of comparison to moral writers by which to represent the lowest condition of man. He inhabits the desert, lives in caves, subsists on roots or raw flesh, has no religious ideas, and is considered by the European as too wretched a being to be converted into a slave. How came he thus degraded?

That is a question which we do not often see answered, and which must be answered, to the shame of Christian Europe. Before that evil hour when the Christian navigator neared the Cape of Good Hope, the Hottentots were “a numerous people, divided into many tribes under a patriarchal government of chiefs and elders.”

They had numerous flocks and herds, lived in movable villages, were bold in the chase, courageous in warfare, yet mild in their tempers and dispositions; had rude conceptions of religion, and exhibited a scene of pastoral life like that of the ancient Nomads of the Syrian plains. In a word, they were a part of that stream of emigration to which we have referred in a previous chapter, and who evidently were living somewhat as they had in the country of their ancestors.

Kolben, who saw the Hottentots in the day of their prosperity, enumerates eighteen tribes of the race. The European colonists hunted these tribes as they would hunt beasts of prey. Most of them they exterminated, and seized upon their possessions; the rest they robbed and drove into forests and deserts, where their miserable descendants exist as wandering Bushmen, exhibiting to good Christian people material for most edifying studies in “anatomy and ethnology.”

There is an immense region, comprising the greater part of interior Africa, two thousand miles in length, and one thousand in breadth, nearly equal to the whole of the United States, which has seldom been trodden by the foot of the Caucasian. It spreads out beneath the tropics, and is supposed by Humboldt to be one of the most interesting and fertile regions on the face of the earth.

“It must be,” he says, “a high table-land, rising into the cooler strata of the atmosphere, combining therefore the qualities of the tierra caliente of Mexico, with its ‘cloudless ethers,’ the luxuriant slopes of the Andes, and the pastoral plains of Southern Asia. It cannot be a sandy desert, though sometimes put down as such upon the maps, because vast rivers come rolling down from it into the surrounding seas.”

It has long been the land of romance, mystery, and wonder, and of strange and tantalizing rumors. The “blameless Ethiopians” of Homer, the favorites of the gods, and the wonderful Macrobians of Herodotus, are placed by Heeren on the outskirts of this region, where they would be most likely to be offshoots from its parent stock. This country is guarded from the European by forces more potent than standing armies.

Around it stretches a border on which brood malaria, pestilence, and death, and which the English government for half a century have expended lives and treasure to break through. In one expedition after another sent out from the island of Ascension, nine white men out of ten fell victims to the “beautiful, but awful climate.”

Nevertheless, news from the interior more or less distinct has found its way over this belt of danger and death. Being a land of mystery, it should be borne in mind that there is a strong tendency to exaggeration in all that comes from it. The Niger, one of the noblest of rivers, skirts this unknown country for some hundreds of miles, after sweeping away through the middle portion of Central Africa already described.

The “Colonial Magazine,” speaking of the exploration of this river by the English expeditions, says: “They have found that this whole tract of country is one of amazing fertility and beauty, abounding in gold, ivory, and all sorts of tropical vegetation. There are hundreds of woods, invaluable for dyeing and agricultural purposes, not found in other portions of the world.

“Through it for hundreds of miles sweeps a river from three to six miles broad, with clean water and unsurpassable depth, flowing on at the rate of two or three miles an hour, without rock, shoal, or snag to intercept its navigation. Other rivers pour into this tributary waters of such volume as must have required hundreds of miles to be collected, yet they seem scarcely to enlarge it. Upon this river are scattered cities, some of which are estimated to contain a million of inhabitants; and the whole country teems with a dense population. Far in the interior, in the very heart of this continent, is a portion of the African race in an advanced state of civilization.”

In the year 1816, Captain Tuckey, of the English Navy, made a disastrous expedition up the Congo. In 1828, Mr. Owen, from the opposite coast, attempted to penetrate this land of mystery and marvel, with a like result. But they found a manifest improvement in the condition of the people the farther they advanced, and they met with rumors of a powerful and civilized nation still farther inward, whose country they attempted in vain to explore.

In 1818, John Campbell, agent of the London Missionary Society, tried to reach this country by journeying from the Cape northward; and later still, Captain Alexander led an expedition, having the same object in view. They found large and populous cities situated in a fertile and highly-cultivated country, but they did not reach the land of marvel and mystery, though they heard the same rumors respecting its people. A writer in the “Westminster Review,” who lived several years on the western coast, gives an interesting description of the interior of the country. He says:—

“A state of civilization exists among some of the tribes, such as had not been suspected hitherto by those who have judged only from such accounts as have been given of the tribes with which travellers have come in contact. They cannot be regarded as savages, having organized townships, fixed habitations, with regular defences about their cities, engaging in agriculture and the manufacture of cotton cloths for clothing, which they ornament with handsome dyes of native production, exhibit handicraft in their conversion of iron and precious metals into articles of use and ornament.”

But to no traveller is the cause of African civilization more indebted than to Dr. Livingstone. Twenty-six years of his life have been spent in exploring that country and working for the good of its people. In August, 1849, he discovered Lake Ngami, one of the most beautiful sheets of water in that sunny land. His discovery of the source of the Zambesi River and its tributaries, the Victoria Falls, the beds of gold, silver, iron and coal, and his communication with a people who had never beheld a white man before, are matters of congratulation to the friends of humanity, and the elevation of man the world over.

Along the shores of the Zambesi were found pink marble beds, and white marble, its clearness scarcely equaled by anything of the kind ever seen in Europe. In his description of the country through which this splendid river passes, Dr. Livingstone says: “When we came to the top of the outer range of the hills, we had a glorious view. At a short distance below us we saw the Kafue, wending away over a forest-clad plain to the confluence, and on the other side of the Zambesi, beyond that, lay a long range of dark hills.

“A line of fleecy clouds appeared, lying along the course of that river at their base. The plain below us, at the left of the Kafue, had more large game on it than anywhere else I had seen in Africa. Hundreds of buffaloes and zebras grazed on the open spaces, and there stood lordly elephants feeding majestically, nothing moving apparently, but the proboscis. I wish that I had been able to take a photograph of the scene so seldom beheld, and which is destined, as guns increase, to pass away from earth. When we descended, we found all the animals remarkably tame. The elephants stood beneath the trees, fanning themselves with their large ears, as if they did not see us.”

The feathered tribe is abundant and beautiful in this section of Africa. Dr. Livingstone says: “The birds of the tropics have been described as generally wanting in power of song. I was decidedly of the opinion that this was not applicable to many parts of Londa. Here the chorus, or body of song, was not much smaller in volume than it is in England. These African birds are not wanting in song; they have only lacked poets to sing their praises, which ours have had from the time of Aristophanes downward.”

Speaking of the fruits, he says: “There are great numbers of wild grape-vines growing in this quarter; indeed, they abound everywhere along the banks of the Zambesi. They are very fine; and it occurred to me that a country which yields the wild vines so very abundantly might be a fit one for the cultivated species. We found that many elephants had been feeding on the fruit called mokoronga. This is a black-colored plum, having purple juice. We all ate it in large quantities, as we found it delicious.”

While exploring the Zambesi, Dr. Livingstone visited the hot spring of Nyamboronda, situated in the bed of a small rivulet called Nyaondo, which shows that igneous action is not yet extinct. The spring emitted water hot enough to cook a fish that might accidentally get into it.

Dr. Livingstone represents the inhabitants, throughout his long journey of more than one thousand miles, as well disposed toward strangers, and a majority of them favorable to civilization and the banishment of the slave-trade, that curse of Africa.

The population of this immense country has been estimated at from fifty to one hundred and fifty millions; but as we have no certain data from which to compute anything like a correct estimate of its inhabitants, it is difficult to arrive at a proper conclusion. Yet from all we can learn, I should judge one hundred and fifty millions is nearest to it.

Recent travellers in Africa have discovered ruins which go far to show that the early settlers built towns, and then abandoned them for more healthy locations. In September, 1871, the South African explorer, Carl Mauch, visited the ruins of an ancient and mysterious city in the highland between the Zambesi and Limpopo Rivers, long known by native report to the Portuguese, and situated in a land, which from its gold and ivory, has long been identified by some authorities, as the Ophir of Scripture. Zimbaoe lies in about lat. 20 degrees 14 seconds S.; long. 31 degrees 48 seconds E.

One portion of the ruins rises upon a granite hill about four hundred feet in relative height; the other, separated by a slight valley, lies upon a somewhat raised terrace. From the curved and zigzag form still apparent in the ruined walls which cover the whole of the western declivity of the hill, these have doubtless formed a once impregnable fortress. The whole space is densely overgrown with nettles and bushes, and some great trees have intertwined their roots with the buildings.

Without exception, the walls, some of which have still a height of thirty feet, are built of cut granite stones, generally of the size of an ordinary brick, but no mortar has been used. The thickness of the walls where they appear above ground is ten feet, tapering to seven or eight feet. In many places monolith pilasters of eight to ten feet in length, ornamented in diamond-shaped lines, stand out of the building. These are generally eight inches wide and three in thickness, cut out of a hard and close stone of greenish-black color, and having a metallic ring.

During the first hurried visit, Mauch was unable to find any traces of inscription, though carvings of unknown characters are mentioned by the early Portuguese writers. Such however, may yet be found, and a clue be thus obtained as to the age of the strange edifice. Zimbaoe is, in all probability, an ancient factory, raised in very remote antiquity by strangers to the land, to overawe the savage inhabitants of the neighboring country, and to serve as a depot for the gold and ivory which it affords. No native tribes dwelling in mud huts could ever have conceived its erection.

CHAPTER IV. CAUSES OF COLOR.

The various colors seen in the natives in Africa, where amalgamation with other races is impossible, has drawn forth much criticism, and puzzled the ethnologist not a little. Yet nothing is more easily accounted for than this difference of color amongst the same people, and even under the same circumstances. Climate, and climate alone, is the sole cause.

And now to the proof. Instances are adduced, in which individuals, transplanted into another climate than that of their birth, are said to have retained their peculiarities of form and color unaltered, and to have transmitted the same to their posterity for generations. But cases of this kind, though often substantiated to a certain extent, appear to have been much exaggerated, both as to the duration of time ascribed, and the absence of any change. It is highly probable, that the original characteristics will be found undergoing gradual modifications, which tend to assimilate them to those of the new country and situation.

The Jews, however slightly their features may have assimilated to those of other nations amongst whom they are scattered, from the causes already stated, certainly form a very striking example as regards the uncertainty of perpetuity in color.

Descended from one stock, and prohibited by the most sacred institutions from intermarrying with the people of other nations, and yet dispersed, according to the divine prediction, into every country on the globe, this one people is marked with the colors of all; fair in Briton and Germany; brown in France and in Turkey; swarthy in Portugal and in Spain; olive in Syria and in Chaldea; tawny or copper-colored in Arabia and in Egypt;[14] whilst they are “black at Congo, in Africa.”[15]

Let us survey the gradations of color on the continent of Africa itself. The inhabitants of the north are whitest; and as we advance southward towards the line, and those countries in which the sun’s rays fall more perpendicularly, the complexion gradually assumes a darker shade. And the same men, whose color has been rendered black by the powerful influence of the sun, if they remove to the north, gradually become whiter (I mean their posterity), and eventually lose their dark color.[16]

The Portuguese who planted themselves on the coast of Africa a few centuries ago, have been succeeded by descendants blacker than many Africans.[17] On the coast of Malabar there are two colonies of Jews, the old colony and the new, separated by color, and known as the “black Jews,” and the “white Jews.” The old colony are the black Jews, and have been longer subjected to the influence of the climate. The hair of the black Jews are curly, showing a resemblance to the Negro. The white Jews are as dark as the Gipsies, and each generation growing darker.

Dr. Livingstone says,—“I was struck with the appearance of the people in Londa, and the neighborhood; they seemed more slender in form, and their color a lighter olive, than any we had hitherto met.”[18]

Lower down the Zambesi, the same writer says: “Most of the men are muscular, and have large, ploughman hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw at Londa.”[19]

In the year 1840, the writer was at Havana, and saw on board a vessel just arrived from Africa some five hundred slaves, captured in different parts of the country. Among these captives were colors varying from light brown to black, and their features represented the finest Anglo-Saxon and the most degraded African.

There is a nation called Tuaricks, who inhabit the oases and southern borders of the great desert, whose occupation is commerce, and whose caravans ply between the Negro countries and Fezzan. They are described by the travellers Hornemann and Lyon.

The western tribes of this nation are white, so far as the climate and their habits will allow. Others are of a yellow cast; others again, are swarthy; and in the neighborhood of Soudan, there is said to be a tribe completely black. All speak the same dialect, and it is a dialect of the original African tongue. There is no reasonable doubt of their being aboriginal.

Lyon says they are the finest race of men he ever saw, “tall, straight, and handsome, with a certain air of independence and pride, which is very imposing.”[20] If we observe the gradations of color in different localities in the meridian under which we live, we shall perceive a very close relation to the heat of the sun in each respectively. Under the equator we have the deep black of the Negro, then the copper or olive of the Moors of Northern Africa; then the Spaniard and Italian, swarthy, compared with other Europeans; the French, still darker than the English, while the fair and florid complexion of England and Germany passes more northerly into the bleached Scandinavian white.[21]

It is well-known, that in whatever region travellers ascend mountains, they find the vegetation at every successive level altering its character, and gradually assuming the appearances presented in more northern countries; thus indicating that the atmosphere, temperature, and physical agencies in general, assimilate, as we approach Alpine regions, to the peculiarities locally connected with high latitudes.

If, therefore, complexion and other bodily qualities belonging to races of men, depend upon climate and external conditions, we should expect to find them varying in reference to elevation of surface; and if they should be found actually to undergo such variations, this will be a strong argument that these external characteristics do, in fact, depend upon local conditions.

Now, if we inquire respecting the physical characters of the tribes inhabiting high tracts in warm countries, we shall find that they coincide with those which prevail in the level or low parts of more northern tracts.

The Swiss, in the high mountains above the plains of Lombardy, have sandy or brown hair. What a contrast presents itself to the traveller who descends into the Milanese territory, where the peasants have black hair and eyes, with strongly-marked Italian, and almost Oriental features.

In the higher part of the Biscayan country, instead of the swarthy complexion and black hair of the Castilians, the natives have a fair complexion, with light blue eyes, and flaxen, or auburn hair.[22]

In the intertropical region, high elevations of surface, as they produce a cooler climate, occasion the appearance of light complexions. In the higher parts of Senegambia, which front the Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in fact, the temperature is known to be moderate, and even cool at times, the light copper-colored Fulahs are found surrounded on every side by black Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same parallel, but on the opposite coast of Africa, are the high plains of Enared and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the inhabitants of Southern Europe.[23]

Do we need any better evidence of the influence of climate on man, than to witness its effect on beasts and birds? Æolian informs us that the Eubaea was famous for producing white oxen.[24] Blumenbach remarks, that “all the swine of Piedmont are black, those of Normandy white, and those of Bavaria are of a reddish brown. The turkeys of Normandy,” he states, “are all black; those of Hanover almost all white. In Guinea, the dogs and the gallinaceous fowls are as black as the human inhabitants of the same country.”[25]

The lack of color, in the northern regions, of many animals which possess color in more temperate latitudes,—as the bear, the fox, the hare, beasts of burden, the falcon, crow, jackdaw, and chaffinch,—seems to arise entirely from climate. The common bear is differently colored in different regions. The dog loses its coat entirely in Africa, and has a smooth skin.

We all see and admit the change which a few years produces in the complexion of a Caucasian going from our northern latitude into the tropics.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Smith on “The Complexion of the Human Species.”

[15] Pritchard.

[16] “Tribute for the Negro,” p. 59.

[17] Pennington’s Text Book, p. 96.

[18] “Livingstone’s Travels,” p. 296.

[19] Ibid, p. 364.

[20] Heeren, Vol. I., p. 297.

[21] Murray’s “North America.”

[22] Pritchard.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Æolian, lib. xii, cap. 36.

[25] Pritchard.

CHAPTER V. CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE IN FEATURES.

We now come to a consideration of the difference in the features of the human family, and especially the great variety to be seen in the African race. From the grim worshippers of Odin in the woods of Germany, down to the present day, all uncivilized nations or tribes have more or less been addicted to the barbarous custom of disfiguring their persons.

Thus, among the North American Indians, the tribe known as the “flat heads,” usually put their children’s heads to press when but a few days old; and consequently, their name fitly represents their personal appearance. While exploring the valley of the Zambesi, Dr. Livingstone met with several tribes whose mode of life will well illustrate this point. He says:—

“The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked,—‘These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks.’ And indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus alone. This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad.”[26]

There is a tribe near the coast of Guinea, who consider a flat nose the paragon of beauty; and at early infancy, the child’s nose is put in press, that it may not appear ugly when it arrives to years of maturity.

Many of the tribes in the interior of Africa mark the face, arms, and breasts; these, in some instances, are considered national identifications. Knocking out the teeth is a common practice, as will be seen by reference to Dr. Livingstone’s travels. Living upon roots, as many of the more degraded tribes do, has its influence in moulding the features.

There is a decided coincidence between the physical characteristics of the varieties of man, and their moral and social condition; and it also appears that their condition in civilized society produces marked modification in the intellectual qualities of the race. Religious superstition and the worship of idols have done much towards changing the features of the Negro from the original Ethiopian of Meroe, to the present inhabitants of the shores of the Zambesi.

The farther the human mind strays from the ever-living God as a spirit, the nearer it approximates to the beasts; and as the mental controls the physical, so ignorance and brutality are depicted upon the countenance.

As the African by his fall has lost those qualities that adorn the visage of man, so the Anglo-Saxon, by his rise in the scale of humanity, has improved his features, enlarged his brain, and brightened in intellect.

Let us see how far history will bear us out in this assertion. We all acknowledge the Anglo-Saxon to be the highest type of civilization. But from whence sprang this refined, proud, haughty, and intellectual race? Go back a few centuries, and we find their ancestors described in the graphic touches of Cæsar and Tacitus. See them in the gloomy forests of Germany, sacrificing to their grim and gory idols; drinking the warm blood of their prisoners, quaffing libations from human skulls; infesting the shores of the Baltic for plunder and robbery; bringing home the reeking scalps of enemies as an offering to their king.

Macaulay says:—“When the Britons first became known to the Tyrian mariners, they were little superior to the Sandwich Islanders.”

Hume says:—“The Britons were a rude and barbarous people, divided into numerous clans, dressed in the skins of wild beasts: druidism was their religion, and they were very superstitious.” Cæsar writing home, said of the Britons,—“They are the most degraded people I ever conquered.” Cicero advised his friend Atticus not to purchase slaves from Briton, “because,” said he, “they cannot be taught music, and are the ugliest people I ever saw.”

An illustration of the influence of circumstances upon the physical appearance of man may be found still nearer our own time. In the Irish rebellion in 1641, and 1689, great multitudes of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the South down into the mountainous tract extending from the Barony of Flews eastward to the sea; on the other side of the kingdom the same race were expelled into Litrin, Sligo, and Mayo. Here they have been almost ever since, exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human race.

The descendants of these exiles are now distinguished physically, from their kindred in Meath, and other districts, where they are not in a state of personal debasement. These people are remarkable for open, projecting mouths, prominent teeth, and exposed gums; their advancing cheek-bones and depressed noses carry barbarism on their very front.

In Sligo and northern Mayo, the consequences of two centuries of degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical condition of the people, affecting not only the features, but the frame, and giving such an example of human degradation as to make it revolting.

They are only five feet two inches, upon an average, bow-legged, bandy-shanked, abortively-featured; the apparitions of Irish ugliness and Irish want.[27]

Slavery is, after all, the great demoralizer of the human race. In addition to the marks of barbarism left upon the features of the African, he has the indelible imprint of the task-master. Want of food, clothing, medical attention when sick, over-work, under the control of drunken and heartless drivers, the hand-cuffs and Negro whip, together with the other paraphernalia of the slave-code, has done much to distinguish the blacks from the rest of the human family. It must also be remembered that in Africa, the people, whether living in houses or in the open air, are oppressed with a hot climate, which causes them to sleep, more or less, with their mouths open. This fact alone is enough to account for the large, wide mouth and flat nose; common sense teaching us that with the open mouth, the features must fall.

As to the hair, which has also puzzled some scientific men, it is easily accounted for. It is well-known that heat is the great crisper of the hair, whether it be on men’s heads or on the backs of animals. I remember well, when a boy, to have witnessed with considerable interest the preparations made on great occasions by the women, with regard to their hair.

The curls which had been carefully laid away for months, were taken out of the drawer, combed, oiled, rolled over the prepared paper, and put in the gently-heated stove, there to remain until the wonted curl should be gained. When removed from the stove, taken off the paper rolls, and shaken out, the hair was fit to adorn the head of any lady in the land.

Now, the African’s hair has been under the influence for many centuries, of the intense heat of his native clime, and in each generation is still more curly, till we find as many grades of hair as we do of color, from the straight silken strands of the Malay, to the wool of the Guinea Negro. Custom, air, food, and the general habits of the people, spread over the great area of the African continent, aid much in producing the varieties of hair so often met with in the descendants of the country of the Nile.

In the recent reports of Dr. Livingstone, he describes the physical appearance of a tribe which he met, and which goes to substantiate what has already been said with regard to the descent of the Africans from the region of the Nile. He says:—

“I happened to be present when all the head men of the great chief Msama who lives west of the south end of Tanganayika, had come together to make peace with certain Arabs who had burned their chief town, and I am certain one could not see more finely-formed, intellectual heads in any assembly in London or Paris, and the faces and forms corresponded with the finely-shaped heads. Msama himself had been a sort of Napoleon for fighting and conquering in his younger days.

“Many of the women are very pretty, and, like all ladies, would be much prettier if they would only let themselves alone. Fortunately, the dears cannot change their darling black eyes, beautiful foreheads, nicely-rounded limbs, well-shaped forms, and small hands and feet; but they must adorn themselves, and this they will do by filing their splendid teeth to points like cats’ teeth. These specimens of the fair sex make shift by adorning their fine, warm brown skins, and tattooing various pretty devices without colors. They are not black, but of a light warm brown color.

“The Cazembe’s queen would be esteemed a real beauty, either in London, Paris, or New York; and yet she had a small hole through the cartilage, near the tip of her fine aquiline nose. But she had only filed one side of two of the front swan-white teeth, and then what a laugh she had! Large sections of the country northwest of Cazembe, but still in the same inland region, are peopled with men very much like those of Msama and Cazembe.”

FOOTNOTES:

[26] “Livingstone’s Travels,” p. 366.

[27] “Dublin University Magazine,” Vol. IV., p. 653.

CHAPTER VI. CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.

While paganism is embraced by the larger portion of the African races, it is by no means the religion of the land. Missionaries representing nearly every phase of religious belief have made their appearance in the country, and gained more or less converts. Mohammedanism, however, has taken by far the greatest hold upon the people.

Whatever may be said of the followers of Mohammed in other countries, it may truly be averred that the African has been greatly benefited by this religion.

Recent discussions and investigations have brought the subject of Mohammedanism prominently before the reading public, and the writings of Weil, and Noldeke, and Muir, and Sprenger, and Emanuel Deutsch, have taught the world that “Mohammedanism is a thing of vitality, fraught with a thousand fruitful germs;” and have amply illustrated the principle enunciated by St. Augustine, showing that there are elements both of truth and goodness in a system which has had so wide-spread an influence upon mankind, embracing within the scope of its operations more than one hundred millions of the human race; that the exhibition of the germs of truth, even though “suspended in a gallery of counterfeits,” has vast power over the human heart.

Whatever may be the intellectual inferiority of the Negro tribes (if, indeed, such inferiority exists), it is certain that many of these tribes have received the religion of Islam without its being forced upon them by the overpowering arms of victorious invaders. The quiet development and organization of a religious community in the heart of Africa has shown that Negroes, equally with other races, are susceptible of moral and spiritual impressions, and of all the sublime possibilities of religion.

The history of the progress of Islam in the country would present the same instances of real and eager mental conflict of minds in honest transition, of careful comparison and reflection, that have been found in other communities where new aspects of truth and fresh considerations have been brought before them. And we hold that it shows a stronger and more healthy intellectual tendency to be induced by the persuasion and reason of a man of moral nobleness and deep personal convictions to join with him in the introduction of beneficial changes, than to be compelled to follow the lead of an irresponsible character, who forces us into measures by his superior physical might.

Mungo Park, in his travels seventy years ago, everywhere remarked the contrast between the pagan and Mohammedan tribes of interior Africa. One very important improvement noticed by him was abstinence from intoxicating drinks.

“The beverage of the pagan Negroes,” he says, “is beer and mead, of which they often drink to excess; the Mohammedan converts drink nothing but water.”

Thus, throughout Central Africa there has been established a vast total abstinence society; and such is the influence of this society that where there are Moslem inhabitants, even in pagan towns, it is a very rare thing to see a person intoxicated. They thus present an almost impenetrable barrier to the desolating flood of ardent spirits with which the traders from Europe and America inundate the coast at Caboon.

Wherever the Moslem is found on the coast, whether Jalof, Fulah, or Mandingo, he looks upon himself as a separate and distinct being from his pagan neighbor, and immeasurably his superior in intellectual and moral respects. He regards himself as one to whom a revelation has been “sent down” from Heaven. He holds constant intercourse with the “Lord of worlds,” whose servant he is. In his behalf Omnipotence will ever interpose in times of danger. Hence he feels that he cannot indulge in the frivolities and vices which he considers as by no means incompatible with the character and professions of the Kafir, or unbeliever.

There are no caste distinctions among them. They do not look upon the privileges of Islam as confined by tribal barriers or limitations. On the contrary, the life of their religion is aggressiveness. They are constantly making proselytes. As early as the commencement of the present century, the elastic and expansive character of their system was sufficiently marked to attract the notice of Mr. Park.

“In the Negro country,” observes that celebrated traveller, “the Mohammedan religion has made, and continues to make, considerable progress.” “The yearning of the native African,” says Professor Crummell, “for a higher religion, is illustrated by the singular fact that Mohammedanism is rapidly and peaceably spreading all through the tribes of Western Africa, even to the Christian settlements of Liberia.”

From Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is scarcely an important town on the seaboard where there is not at least one mosque, and active representatives of Islam often side by side with the Christian teachers. And as soon as a pagan, however obscure or degraded, embraces the Moslem faith, he is at once admitted as an equal to their society. Slavery and slave-trade are laudable institutions, provided the slaves are Kafirs. The slave who embraces Islamism is free, and no office is closed against him on account of servile blood.[28]

Passing over into the southern part, we find the people in a state of civilization, and yet superstitious, as indeed are the natives everywhere.

The town of Noble is a settlement of modern times, sheltering forty thousand souls, close to an ancient city of the same name, the Rome of aboriginal South Africa. The religious ceremonies performed there are of the most puerile character, and would be thought by most equally idolatrous with those formerly held in the same spot by the descendants of Mumbo Jumbo.

On Easter Monday is celebrated the Festa del Señor de los Temblores, or Festival of the Lord of Earthquakes. On this day the public plaza in front of the cathedral is hung with garlands and festoons, and the belfry utters its loudest notes. The images of the saints are borne out from their shrines, covered with fresh and gaudy decorations. The Madonna of Bethlehem, San Cristoval, San Blas, and San José, are borne on in elevated state, receiving as they go the prayers of all the Maries, and Christophers, and Josephs, who respectively regard them as patrons. But the crowning honors are reserved for the miraculous Crucifix, called the Lord of Earthquakes, which is supposed to protect the city from the dreaded terrestrial shocks, the Temblores.

The procession winds around a prescribed route, giving opportunity for public prayers and the devotions of the multitude; the miraculous image, in a new spangled skirt, that gives it the most incongruous resemblance to an opera-dancer, is finally shut up in the church; and then the glad throng, feeling secure from earthquakes another year, dance and sing in the plaza all night long.

The Borers, a hardy, fighting, and superstitious race, have a showy time at weddings and funerals. When the appointed day for marriage has arrived, the friends of the contracting parties assemble and form a circle; into this ring the bridegroom leads his lady-love.

The woman is divested of her clothing, and stands somewhat as mother Eve did in the garden before she thought of the fig-leaf. The man then takes oil from a shell, and anoints the bride from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet; at the close of this ceremony, the bridegroom breaks forth into joyful peals of laughter, in which all the company join, the musicians strike up a lively air, and the dance commences. At the close of this, the oldest woman in the party comes forward, and taking the bride by the right hand, gives her to her future husband.

Two maids standing ready with clothes, jump to the bride, and begin rubbing her off. After this, she is again dressed, and the feast commences, consisting mainly of fruits and wines.

The funeral services of the same people are not less interesting. At the death of one of their number, the body is stripped, laid out upon the ground, and the friends of the deceased assemble, forming a circle around it, and commence howling like so many demons. They then march and counter-march around, with a subdued chant. After this, they hop around first on one foot, then on the other; stopping still, they cry at the top of their voices—“She’s in Heaven, she’s in Heaven!” Here they all fall flat upon the ground, and roll about for a few minutes, after which they simultaneously rise, throw up their hands, and run away yelling and laughing.

Among the Bechuanas, when a chief dies, his burial takes place in his cattle-yard, and all the cattle are driven for an hour over the grave, so that it may be entirely obliterated.[29] In all the Backwain’s pretended dreams and visions of their God, he has always a crooked leg like the Egyptian.[30]

Musical and dancing festivities form a great part of the people’s time. With some of the tribes, instrumental music has been carried to a high point of culture. Bruce gives an account of a concert, the music of which he heard at the distance of a mile or more, on a still night in October. He says: “It was the most enchanting strain I ever listened to.”

It is not my purpose to attempt a detailed account of the ceremonies of the various tribes that inhabit the continent of Africa; indeed, such a thing would be impossible, even if I were inclined to do so.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Prof. Blyden, in “Methodist Quarterly Review,” June, 1871.

[29] Dr. Livingstone.

[30] Thau.

CHAPTER VII. THE ABYSSINIANS.

According to Bruce, who travelled extensively in Africa, the Abyssinians have among them a tradition, handed down from time immemorial, that Cush was their father. Theodore, late king of Abyssinia, maintained that he descended in a direct line from Moses. As this monarch has given wider fame to his country than any of his predecessors, it will not be amiss to give a short sketch of him and his government.

Theodore was born at Quarel, on the borders of the western Amhara, and was educated in a convent in which he was placed by his mother, his father being dead. He early delighted in military training, and while yet a boy, became proficient as a swordsman and horseman.

Like Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and many other great warriors, Theodore became uneasy under the restraint of the school-room, and escaped from the convent to his uncle, Dejatch Comfu, a noted rebel, from whom he imbibed a taste for warlike pursuits, and eventually became ruler of a large portion of Abyssinia. Naturally ambitious and politic, he succeeded in enlarging his authority steadily at the expense of the other “Ras,” or chiefs, of Abyssinia. His power especially increased when, in 1853, he defeated his father-in-law, Ras Ali, and took him prisoner. At length in 1855, he felt himself strong enough to formally claim the throne of all Abyssinia, and he was crowned as such by the Abuna Salama, the head of the Abyssinian church.

His reign soon proved to be the most effective Abyssinia had ever had. As soon as he came into power, his attention was directed to the importance of being on terms of friendship with the government which rules India, and which has established itself in the neighboring stronghold of Aden. He therefore resolved to assert the rights assured to him by virtue of the treaty made between Great Britain and Abyssinia in the year 1849, and ratified in 1852, in which it was stipulated that each State should receive embassadors from the other. Mr. Plowden, who had been for many years English consul at Massawah, although not an accredited agent to Abyssinia, went to that country with presents for the people in authority, and remained during the war which broke out at the succession of Theodore.

Unfortunately, Mr. Plowden, who had succeeded in winning the favor of the emperor, to a large extent, was killed; and his successor, Mr. Cameron, was informed, soon after his arrival in 1862, by the King, that he desired to carry out the above-mentioned treaty; he even wrote an autograph letter to Queen Victoria, asking permission to send an embassy to London. Although the letter reached England in February, 1863, it remained unanswered; and the supposition is, that this circumstance, together with a quarrel with Mr. Stern, a missionary, who in a book on Abyssinia, had spoken disrespectfully of the King, and who had remonstrated against the flogging to death of two interpreters, roused the King’s temper, and a year after having dispatched the unanswered letter, he sent an armed force to the missionary station, seized the missionaries, and put them in chains. He also cast Mr. Cameron into prison, and had him chained continually to an Abyssinian soldier.

Great excitement prevailed in England on the arrival of the news of this outrage against British subjects: but in consideration of an armed expedition having to undergo many hardships in such a warm climate, it was deemed best by the English government to use diplomacy in its efforts to have the prisoners released. It was not until the second half of August, 1865, that Mr. Rassam, an Asiatic, by birth, was sent on a special mission to the Abyssinian potentate, and was received on his arrival in February, 1866, in a truly magnificent style, the release of the prisoners being at once ordered by the King. But the hope thus raised was soon to be disappointed, for when Mr. Rassam and the other prisoners were just on the point of taking leave of the Emperor, they were put under arrest, and notified that they would have to remain in the country as State guests until an answer could be obtained to another letter which the King was going to write to the Queen.

After exhausting all diplomatic resources to obtain from Theodore the release of the captives, the English government declared war against Theodore. The war was chiefly to be carried on with the troops, European and native, which in India had become accustomed to the hot climate. The first English troops made their appearance in October, 1867, but it was not until the close of the year that the whole of the army arrived. The expedition was commanded by General Sir Robert Napier, heretofore commanding-general at Bombay. Under him acted as commanders of divisions, Sir Charles Steevely, and Colonel Malcolm, while Colonel Merewether commanded the cavalry. The distance from Massowah, the landing-place of the troops, to Magdala, the capital of Theodore, is about three hundred miles. The English had to overcome great difficulties, but they overcame them with remarkable energy. King Theodore gradually retired before the English without risking a battle until he reached his capital. Then he made a stand, and fought bravely for his crown, but in vain; he was defeated, the capital captured, and the King himself slain.

King Theodore was, on the whole, the greatest ruler Abyssinia has ever had: even, according to English accounts, he excelled in all manly pursuits, and his general manner was polite and engaging. Had he avoided this foolish quarrel with England, and proceeded on the way of reform which he entered upon in the beginning of his reign, he would probably have played an important part in the political regeneration of Eastern Africa.

As a people, the Abyssinians are intelligent, are of a ginger-bread, or coffee color, although a large portion of them are black. Theodore was himself of this latter class. They have fine schools and colleges, and a large and flourishing military academy. Agriculture, that great civilizer of man, is carried on here to an extent unknown in other parts of the country.

CHAPTER VIII. WESTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA.

The Colony of Sierra Leone, of which Free Town is the capital, is situated in 8 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, and is about 13½ degrees west longitude; was settled by the English, and was for a long time the most important place on the western coast of Africa. The three leading tribes on the coast of Sierra Leone are the Timanis, the Susus, and the Veys. The first of these surround the British Colony of Sierra Leone on all sides. The Susus have their principal settlements near the head-waters of the Rio Pongas, and are at some distance from the sea coast. The Veys occupy all the country about the Gallinas and Cape Mount, and extend back into the country to the distance of fifty or a hundred miles.

The Timanis cultivate the soil to some extent, have small herds of domestic animals, and are engaged to a greater or less extent in barter with the English colonists of Sierra Leone. They may be seen in large numbers about the streets of Free Town, wearing a large square cotton cloth thrown around their persons. They are strong and healthy in appearance, but have a much less intellectual cast of countenance than the Mandingoes or Fulahs, who may also be seen in the same place. Like all the other tribes in Africa, especially the pagans, they are much addicted to fetichism,—worship of evil spirits,—administering the red-wood ordeal, and other ceremonies. They are depraved, licentious, indolent, and avaricious. But this is no more than what may be said of every heathen tribe on the globe.

The Veys, though not a numerous or powerful tribe, are very intellectual, and have recently invented an alphabet for writing their own language, which has been printed, and now they enjoy the blessings of a written system, for which they are entirely indebted to their own ingenuity and enterprise. This is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable achievements of this or any other age, and is itself enough to silence forever the cavils and sneers of those who think so contemptuously of the intellectual endowments of the African race. The characters used in this system are all new, and were invented by the people themselves without the aid of outsiders. The Veys occupy all the country along the sea-board from Gallinas to Cape Mount.

In stature, they are about the ordinary height, of slender, but graceful figures, with very dark complexions, but large and well-formed heads.

As the Veys are within the jurisdiction of Liberia, that government will be of great service to them. The Biassagoes, the Bulloms, the Dego, and the Gola, are also inhabitants of the Sierra Leone coast. Other tribes of lesser note are scattered all along the coast, many of which have come under the good influence of the Liberian government. Cape Coast Castle, the stronghold of the English on the African coast, has, in past years, been a place of great importance. It was from this place that its governor, Sir Charles McCarthy, went forth to the contest with the Ashantees, a warlike tribe, and was defeated, losing his life, together with that of seven others.

Here, at this castle, “L. E. L.,” the gifted poetess and novelist of England, died, and was buried within the walls. This lamented lady married Captain McLean, the governor-general of the castle, and her death caused no little comment at the time, many blaming the husband for the wife’s death.

The Kru people are also on the coast, and have less general intelligence than the Fulahs, Mandingoes, and Degos. They are physically a fine-appearing race, with more real energy of character than either of the others. It would be difficult to find better specimens of muscular development, men of more manly and independent carriage, or more real grace of manner, anywhere in the world. No one ever comes in contact with them, for the first time, without being struck with their open, frank countenances, their robust and well-proportioned forms, and their independent bearing, even when they have but the scantiest covering for their bodies.

Their complexion varies from the darkest shade of the Negro to that of the true mulatto. Their features are comparatively regular; and, though partaking of all the characteristics of the Negro, they are by no means strongly marked in their general outline or development. The most marked deficiency is in the formation of their heads, which are narrow and peaked, and do not indicate a very high order of intellectual endowment. Experience, however, has shown that they are as capable of intellectual improvement as any other race of men.[31]

In the interior of Youeba, some distance back from Cape Coast, lies the large city of Ibaddan, a place with a population of about two hundred thousand souls. Abeokuta has a population of more than one hundred thousand, and is about seventy-five miles from the sea coast, with a history that is not without interest. Some fifty years ago, a few persons of different tribes, who had been constantly threatened and annoyed by the slave-traders of the coast, fled to the back country, hid away in a large cave, coming out occasionally to seek food, and taking in others who sought protection from these inhuman men-hunters.

This cavern is situated on the banks of the Ogun, and in the course of time became the hiding-place of great numbers from the surrounding country. At first, they subsisted on berries, roots, and such other articles of food as they could collect near their place of retreat; but growing in strength by the increase of population, they began to bid defiance to their enemies.

A slave-hunting party from Dahomey, having with them a considerable number of captives, passing the cavern, thought it a good opportunity to add to their wealth, and consequently, made an attack upon the settlers. The latter came forth in large force from their hiding-place, gave battle to the traders, defeated them, capturing their prisoners and putting their enemies to flight. The captives were at once liberated, and joined their deliverers. In the course of time this settlement took the name of Abeokuta. These people early turned their attention to agriculture and manufacturing, and by steady increase in population, it soon became a city of great wealth and importance. About thirty years ago, a number of recaptives from Sierra Leone, who had formerly been taken from this region of country, and who had been recaptured by the English, liberated and educated, visited Lagos for trade. Here they met many of their old friends and relations from Abeokuta, learned of the flourishing town that had grown up, and with larger numbers returned to swell the population of the new city.

The King of Dahomey watched the growing power of Abeokuta with an evil eye, and in 1853, he set in motion a large army, with the view of destroying this growing city, and reducing its inhabitants to slavery. The King made a desperate attack and assault upon the place, but he met with a resistance that he little thought of. The engagement was carried on outside of the walls for several hours, when the Dahomian army was compelled to give way, and the King himself was saved only by the heroism and frantic manner in which he was defended by his Amazons. This success of the people of Abeokuta gave the place a reputation above what it had hitherto enjoyed, and no invading army has since appeared before its walls.

Much of the enterprise and improvement of these people is owing to the good management of Shodeke, their leader. Coming from all sections near the coast, and the line of the slave-traders, representing the remnants of one hundred and thirty towns, these people, in the beginning, were anything but united. Shodeke brought them together and made them feel as one family. This remarkable man had once been captured by the slave-traders, but had escaped, and was the first to suggest the cave as a place of safety. Throughout Sierra Leone, Abeokuta, and the Yoruba country generally the best-known man in connection with the African civilization, is Mr. Samuel Crowther, a native, and who, in the Yoruba language, was called Adgai. He was embarked as a slave on board a slaver at Badagry, in 1822. The vessel was captured by a British man-of-war and taken to Sierra Leone. Here he received a good education, was converted, and became a minister of the Gospel, after which he returned to his native place.

Mr. Crowther is a man of superior ability, and his attainments in learning furnish a happy illustration of the capacity of the Negro for improvements. Dahomey is one of the largest and most powerful of all the governments on the west coast. The King is the most absolute tyrant in the world, owning all the land, the people, and everything that pertains to his domain. The inhabitants are his slaves, and they must come and go at his command. The atrocious cruelties that are constantly perpetrated at the command and bidding of this monarch, has gained for him the hatred of the civilized world; and strange to say, these deeds of horror appear to be sanctioned by the people, who have a superstitious veneration for their sovereign, that is without a parallel. Abomi, the capital of Dahomey, has a large population, a fort, and considerable trade. The King exacts from all the sea-port towns on this part of the coast, and especially from Popo, Porto Novo, and Badagry, where the foreign slave-trade, until within a very short period, was carried on as in no other part of Africa.

The Dahomian soldiery, for the past two hundred years, have done little less than hunt slaves for the supply of the traders.

The English blockading squadron has done great service in breaking up the slave-trade on this part of the coast, and this has turned the attention of the people to agriculture. The country has splendid natural resources, which if properly developed, will make it one of the finest portions of Western Africa. The soil is rich, the seasons are regular, and the climate favorable for agricultural improvements. Indian corn, yams, potatoes, manico, beans, ground-nuts, plantains, and bananas are the chief products of the country. Cotton is raised to a limited extent.

The practice of sacrificing the lives of human beings upon the graves of dead kings every year in Dahomey, and then paving the palace grounds with the skulls of the victims, has done much to decrease the population of this kingdom. As many as two thousand persons have been slaughtered on a single occasion. To obtain the required number, wars have been waged upon the surrounding nations for months previous to the sacrifice. There is no place where there is more intense heathenism; and to mention no other feature in their superstitious practice, the worship of snakes by the Dahomians fully illustrates this remark.

A building in the centre of the town is devoted to the exclusive use of reptiles, and they may be seen here at any time in great numbers. They are fed, and more care taken of them than of the human inhabitants of the place. If they are found straying away they must be brought back; and at the sight of them the people prostrate themselves on the ground, and do them all possible reverence. To kill or injure one of them is to endure the penalty of death. On certain days they are taken out by the priests or doctors, and paraded about the streets, the bearers allowing them to coil themselves around their arms, necks, and bodies, and even to put their heads into the carriers’ bosoms.

They are also employed to detect persons who are suspected of theft, witchcraft, and murder. If in the hands of the priest they bite the suspected person, it is sure evidence of his guilt; and no doubt the serpent is trained to do the will of his keeper in all cases. Images called greegrees, of the most uncouth shape and form, may be seen in all parts of the town, and are worshipped by everybody.

In every part of Africa, polygamy is a favorite institution. In their estimation it lies at the very foundation of all social order, and society would scarcely be worth preserving without it. The highest aspiration that the most eminent African ever rises to, is to have a large number of wives. His happiness, his reputation, his influence, his position in society, and his future welfare, all depend upon it. In this feeling the women heartily concur; for a woman would much rather be the wife of a man who had fifty others, than to be the sole representative of a man who had not force of character to raise himself above the one-woman level.

The consequence is, that the so-called wives are little better than slaves. They have no purpose in life other than to administer to the wants and gratify the passions of their lords, who are masters and owners, rather than husbands.

In nearly every nation or tribe, the wife is purchased; and as this is done in the great majority of cases when she is but a child, her wishes, as a matter of course, are never consulted in this most important affair of her whole life.

As both father and mother hold a claim on the daughter, and as each makes a separate bargain with the future son-in-law, the parent generally makes a good thing out of the sale. The price of a wife ranges all the way from the price of a cow to three cows, a goat or a sheep, and some articles of crockery-ware, beads, and a few other trinkets. Where the girl is bought in infancy, it remains with the parents till of a proper age. There are no widows, the woman being sold for life, and becomes the wife of the husband’s brother, should the former die. A man of respectability is always expected to provide a separate house for each of his wives. Each woman is mistress of her own household, provides for herself and her children, and entertains her husband as often as he favors her with his company.

The wife is never placed on a footing of social equality with her husband. Her position is a menial one, and she seldom aspires to anything higher than merely to gratify the passions of her husband. She never takes a seat at the social board with him.

Men of common standing are never allowed to have as many wives as a sovereign. Both the Kings of Dahomey and Ashantee are permitted by law to have three thousand three hundred and thirty-three. No one is allowed to see the King’s wives except the King’s female relatives, or such messengers as he may send, and even these must communicate with them through their bamboo walls. Sometimes they go forth in a body through the streets, but are always preceded by a company of boys, who warn the people to run out of the way, and avoid the unpardonable offence of seeing the King’s wives. The men especially, no matter what their rank, must get out of the way; and if they have not had sufficient time to do this, they must fall flat on the ground and hide their faces until the procession has passed. To see one of the King’s wives, even accidentally, is a capital offence; and the scene of the confusion which occasionally takes place in the public market in consequence of the unexpected approach of the royal cortege, is said to be ludicrous beyond all description.

At the death of the King, it is not uncommon for his wives to fall upon each other with knives, and lacerate themselves in the most cruel and barbarous manner; and this work of butchery is continued until they are forcibly restrained. Women are amongst the most reliable and brave in the King’s army, and constitute about one-third of the standing army in Ashantee and Dahomey.

One of the most influential and important classes in every African community is the deybo, a set of professional men who combine the medical and priestly office in the same person. They attend the sick and administer medicines, which usually consist of decoctions of herbs or roots, and external applications. A doctor is expected to give his undivided attention to one patient at a time, and is paid only in case of successful treatment. If the case is a serious one, he is expected to deposit with the family, as a security for his good behavior and faithful discharge of duty, a bundle of hair that was shorn from his head at the time he was inaugurated into office, and without which he could have no skill in his profession whatever.

The doctor professes to hold intercourse with, and have great influence over demons. He also claims to have communications from God. No man can be received into the conclave without spending two years or more as a student with some eminent member of the fraternity. During this period he must accompany his preceptor in all his journeyings, perform a variety of menial services, is prohibited from shaving his head, washing his body, or allowing water to be applied to him in any way whatever, unless perchance he falls into a stream, or is overtaken by a shower of rain, when he is permitted to get off as much dirt as possible from his body. The doctor’s badge of office is a monkey’s skin, which he carries in the form of a roll wherever he goes, and of which he is as proud as his white brother of his sheep-skin diploma.

In their capacity as priests, these men profess to be able to raise the dead, cast out devils, and do all manner of things that other people are incapable of doing. The doctor is much feared by the common classes. No innovation in practice is allowed by these men. A rather amusing incident occurred recently, which well illustrates the jealousy, bigotry, and ignorance of these professionals.

Mr. Samuel Crowther, Jr., having returned from England, where he had studied for a physician, began the practice of his profession amongst his native people. The old doctors hearing that Crowther was prescribing, called on him in a large delegation. Mr. Crowther received the committee cordially; heard what they had to say, and expressed his willingness to obey, provided they would give him a trial, and should find him deficient. To this they agreed; and a time was appointed for the test to take place. On the day fixed, the regulars appeared, clothed in their most costly robes, well provided with charms, each holding in his hand his monkey’s skin, with the head most prominent.

Mr. Crowther was prepared to receive them. A table was placed in the middle of the room, and on it a dish, in which were a few drops of sulphuric acid, so placed that a slight motion of the table would cause it to flow into a mixture of chlorate of potassa and white sugar. An English clock was also in the room, from which a cock issued every hour and crowed. It was arranged that the explosion from the dish, and the crowing of the rooster, should take place at the same moment.

The whole thing was to be decided in favor of the party who should perform the greatest wonder. After all were seated, Mr. Crowther made a harangue, and requested them to say who should lead off in the contest.

This privilege they accorded to him. The doors were closed, the curtains drawn, and all waited in breathless silence. Both the hands on the clock were fast approaching the figure twelve. Presently the cock came out and began crowing, to the utter astonishment of the learned visitors. Crowther gave the table a jostle; and suddenly, from the midst of the dish burst forth flame and a terrible explosion. This double wonder was too much for these sages. The scene that followed is indescribable. One fellow rushed through the window and scampered; one fainted and fell upon the floor; another, in his consternation, overturned chairs, tables, and everything in his way, took refuge in the bedroom, under the bed, from which he was with difficulty afterwards removed.

It need not be added that they gave no more trouble, and the practice they sought to break up was the more increased for their pains.[32]

In Southern Guinea, and especially in the Gabun country, the natives are unsurpassed for their cunning and shrewdness in trade; and even in everything in the way of dealing with strangers. The following anecdote will illustrate how easily they can turn matters to their own account.

There is a notable character in the Gabun, of the name of Cringy. No foreigner ever visits the river without making his acquaintance; and all who do so, remember him forever after. He speaks English, French, Portuguese, and at least half a dozen native languages, with wonderful ease. He is, in person, a little, old, grey-headed, hump-backed man, with a remarkably bright, and by no means unpleasant eye. His village is perched on a high bluff on the north side of the Gabun River, near its outlet. He generally catches the first sight of vessels coming in, and puts off in his boat to meet the ship. If the captain has never been on the coast before, Cringy will make a good thing out of him, unless he has been warned by other sailors. The cunning African is a pilot; and after he brings a vessel in and moors her opposite his town by a well-known usage, it is now Cringy’s. He acts as interpreter; advises the captain; helps to make bargains, and puts on airs as if the ship belonged to him. If anybody else infringes on his rights in the slightest degree, he is at once stigmatized as a rude and ill-mannered person. Cringy is sure to cheat everyone he deals with, and has been seized half a dozen times or more by men-of-war, or other vessels, and put in irons. But he is so adroit with his tongue, and so good-natured and humorous, that he always gets clear.

The following trick performed by him, will illustrate the character of the man.

Some years ago, the French had a fight with the natives. After reducing the people near the mouth of the river to obedience by the force of arms, Commodore B— proposed to visit King George’s towns, about thirty miles higher up the river, with the hope of getting them to acknowledge the French authority without further resort to violence. In order to make a favorable impression, he determined to take his squadron with him. His fleet consisted of two large sloops-of-war and a small vessel. As none of the French could speak the native language, and none of King George’s people could speak French, it was a matter of great importance that a good interpreter should be employed. It was determined that Cringy was the most suitable man. He was sent for, accepted the offer at once—for Cringy himself had something of importance at stake—and resolved to profit by this visit.

One of Cringy’s wives was the daughter of King George; and this woman, on account of ill-treatment, had fled and gone back into her father’s country. All his previous efforts to get his wife had failed. And now when the proposition came from the commodore, the thought occurred to Cringy that he could make himself appear to be a man of great influence and power. The party set out with a favoring wind and tide, and were soon anchored at their place of destination. With a corps of armed marines, the commodore landed and proceeded to the King’s palace.

The people had had no intimation of such a visit, and the sudden arrival of this armed body produced a very strong sensation, and all eyes were on Cringy, next to the commodore, for he was the only one that could explain the object of the expedition. King George and his council met the commodore, and Cringy was instructed to say that the latter had come to have a friendly talk with the King, with the view of establishing amicable relations between him and the King of France, and would be glad to have his signature to a paper to that effect. Now was Cringy’s moment; and he acted his part well.

The wily African, with the air of one charged with a very weighty responsibility, said: “King George, the commodore is very sorry that you have not returned my wife. He wishes you to do it now in a prompt and quiet manner, and save him the trouble and pain of bringing his big guns to bear upon your town.”

King George felt the deepest indignation; not so much against the commodore, as Cringy, for resorting to so extraordinary a measure to compel him to give up his daughter. But he concealed the emotions of his heart, and, without the slightest change of countenance, but with a firm and determined tone of voice, he said to his own people, “Go out quietly and get your guns loaded; and if one drop of blood is shed here to-day, be sure that not one of these Frenchmen get back to their vessels. But be sure and”—he said it with great emphasis, “let Cringy be the first man killed.”

This was more than Cringy had bargained for. And how is he to get out of this awkward scrape? The lion has been aroused, and how shall he be pacified? But this is just the position to call out Cringy’s peculiar gift, and he set to work in the most penitent terms. He acknowledged, and begged pardon for his rash, unadvised counsel; reminded his father-in-law that they were all liable to do wrong sometimes, and that this was the most grievous error of his whole life. And as to the threat of the commodore, a single word from him would be sufficient to put a stop to all hostile intentions.

The wrath of the King was assuaged. The commodore, however, by this time had grown impatient to know what was going on, and especially, why the people had left the house so abruptly. With the utmost self-possession, Cringy replied that the people had gone to catch a sheep, which the King had ordered for the commodore’s dinner; and as to signing the paper, that would be done when the commodore was ready to take his departure. And to effect these two objects, Cringy relied wholly upon his own power of persuasion.

True enough the sheep was produced and the paper was signed. King George and the French commodore parted good friends, and neither of them knew for more than a month after, the double game which Cringy had played; and what was more remarkable than all, Cringy was rewarded by the restoration of his wife.[33]