Captain Canot | Page 2

pages, should revel in the sensualities of Dahomey; but we must
wonder at the passive endurance that could chain a superior order of
man, like Don Pedro Blanco, for fifteen unbroken years, to his
pestilential hermitage, till the avaricious anchorite went forth from the
marshes of Gallinas, laden with gold. I do not think this story is likely
to seduce or educate a race of slavers!
The frankness of Canot's disclosures may surprise the more reserved
and timid classes of society; but I am of opinion that there is an
ethnographic value in the account of his visit to the Mandingoes and

Fullahs, and especially in his narrative of the wars, jugglery, cruelty,
superstition, and crime, by which one sixth of Africa subjects the
remaining five sixths to servitude.
As the reader peruses these characteristic anecdotes, he will ask himself
how,--in the progress of mankind,--such a people is to be approached
and dealt with? Will the Mahometanism of the North which is winning
its way southward, and infusing itself among the crowds of central
Africa, so as, in some degree, to modify their barbarism, prepare the
primitive tribes to receive a civilization and faith which are as true as
they are divine? Will our colonial fringe spread its fibres from the coast
to the interior, and, like veins of refreshing blood, pour new currents
into the mummy's heart? Is there hope for a nation which, in three
thousand years, has hardly turned in its sleep? The identical types of
race, servitude, occupation, and character that are now extant in Africa,
may be found on the Egyptian monuments built forty centuries ago;
while a Latin poem, attributed to Virgil, describes a menial negress
who might unquestionably pass for a slave of our Southern plantations:
"Interdum clamat Cybalen; erat unica custos; Afra genus, tota patriam
testante figura; Torta comam, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem;
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo, Cruribus exilis,
spatiosa prodiga planta; Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant."[1]
It will be seen from these hints that our memoir has nothing to do with
slavery as a North American institution, except so far as it is an
inheritance from the system it describes; yet, in proportion as the
details exhibit an innate or acquired inferiority of the negro race in its
own land, they must appeal to every generous heart in behalf of the
benighted continent.
It has lately become common to assert that Providence permits an
exodus through slavery, in order that the liberated negro may in time
return, and, with foreign acquirements, become the pioneer of African
civilization. It is attempted to reconcile us to this "good from evil," by
stopping inquiry with the "inscrutability of God's ways!" But we should
not suffer ourselves to be deceived by such imaginary irreverence; for,
in God's ways, there is nothing less inscrutable than his law of right.

That law is never qualified in this world. It moves with the irresistible
certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man free, in order
that his responsibility may be unquestionable, it leaves mercy, even, for
the judgment hereafter. Such a system of divine law can never palliate
the African slave trade, and, in fact, it is the basis of that human
legislation which converts the slaver into a pirate, and awards him a
felon's doom.
For these reasons, we should discountenance schemes like those
proposed not long ago in England, and sanctioned by the British
government, for the encouragement of spontaneous emigration from
Africa under the charge of contractors. The plan was viewed with fear
by the colonial authorities, and President Roberts at once issued a
proclamation to guard the natives. No one, I think, will read this book
without a conviction that the idea of voluntary expatriation has not
dawned on the African mind, and, consequently, what might begin in
laudable philanthropy would be likely to end in practical servitude.
Intercourse, trade, and colonization, in slow but steadfast growth, are
the providences intrusted to us for the noble task of civilization. They
who are practically acquainted with the colored race of our country,
have long believed that gradual colonization was the only remedy for
Africa as well as America. The repugnance of the free blacks to
emigration from our shores has produced a tardy movement, and thus
the African population has been thrown back grain by grain, and not
wave by wave. Every one conversant with the state of our colonies,
knows how beneficial this languid accretion has been. It moved many
of the most enterprising, thrifty, and independent. It established a social
nucleus from the best classes of American colored people. Like human
growth, it allowed the frame to mature in muscular solidity. It gave
immigrants time to test the climate; to learn the habit of government in
states as well as in