to give, as in the past, a little indigo, ivory and palm oil, borne on the backs of degraded natives to the coast, we find that it is in reality a continent already producing unassisted harvests of cotton and sugar, and some of the products most necessary to man, and only needing that development which Christian civilization can give, but has never given, to bring it into the closest sympathy, and for good, with the rest of the world.

What is true of the Africa continent has been emphatically true of the people. The world has always seen the African race in its lowest form. This seems true as far back as Egyptian monumental times. One is struck, when looking at copies of ancient hicroglyhics, with the degraded type of negro feature which always appears when these captive people are delineated. The African race seems to have been fated to be always represented by a slave, and, as was inevitable, it has been judged by the example seen. But the researches of travellers have, of late, compelled us to reverse many, if not all these conceptions. Africa, gives us indeed, perhaps the lowest types of humanity in the Bushman * or Hottentot, yet the explorations of travellers have also shown these are not true and normal examples of the African stock.

*Even these Bushmen seem to have suffered in reputation from their observers. "Those who inhabit," says Livingstone, "the hot sandy plains of the desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion, and severe privation. Many are of low stature, but not dwarfish; the specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like coster-mongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; consequently English ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way, as if the ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa as characteristic of the entire British nation."

It can readily be seen that whatever the African character is measured by the standard of an African slave, the judgement must necessarily be an erroneous one. The best tribes are not, in the nature of things, those out of which slaves are made. The bolder, more energetic and intelligent are those who make slaves. War and conquest are the fruitful sources of slavery; they have been in all age, in every country, and are so today in Africa. But the abler tribes are the warriors and the conquerors, while the weaker and the lower are the captives. Thus at the outset the slave declares by the fact of his servitude his inferiority of lineage.

To this we are also to add the pretty well-known fact that the poorest of these captives are those who came into the hands of the slave-dealer on the coast, while the better made and the more intelligent are reserved for the service of their captors. Thus, with this further reduction, you have in the African as he comes to the slave-ship, the lowest specimen of an inferior type of his people. But just these have been the exponents of the African race, and it is not only not surprising, but entirely natural that a false estimate should have been made of the whole negro family.

What we would infer, the exploration of recent travellers show to be actually the case. Within the limits of a single article such as this, it is of course impossible to traverse the whole ground. We might, however, refer to the Caffrees in the south, close upon the regions where the Hottentot is found, a race of stalwart and noble men, who have had skill and bravery enough to resist the power of the Dutch, and even to wage a determined war with the English power itself. To the east of these, Dr. Lindley, one of the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, found tribes among whom he lived for a quarter of century, and whom he describes as being physically inferior to no race, the men in some districts averaging nearly six feet in height. "They might be called stupid," says Livingstone, (p.21,) speaking of Bakwains, a people with whom he was much associated in South Africa, in "matters which had not come within the sphere of their own observation, but in other things they showed more intelligence than is to be met with in our own uneducated peasantry." Two of the missionaries of the American Board, Messrs. Preston and Adams, speaking ( Missionary Herald , 1856,) of a visit to the Pangwees, a very extensive tribe of people living just under the Equator and back from the coast, and who are described by other writers as an every way superior race, tell us of natives whom they saw from places still farther inland "which we had heard of, but as yet had been unable to reach." "The variety," say they, "of complexion presented to us was quite an object of curiosity. Some were of a jet black, others with their braids of soft black hair, one and a half, or two feet in length , might be easily mistaken for quadroons." The New American Encyclopedia treating of the Mandingoes, a West African race, says: "They are remarkable for their industry and energy. They are mostly Mohammedans. The principal trade of that part of West Africa which lies between the equator and the great desert is in their hands. They are not only active and shrewd merchants, but industrious agriculturists, and breeders of good stock of cattle, sheep and goats. They are black in color, tall, well-shaped, with regular features and wooly hair. In character they are amiable, hospitable, imaginative, credulous, truthful, fond of music, dancing and poetry. They are adventurous travellers, extending their commercial journeys over a greater part of Africa. The Mandingoes are the most numerous race of West Africa, and have spread themselves to a great distance from their original seat, being found all over the valleys of the Gambia, Senegal and Niger." Such quotations and testimonies might be multiplied, were it necessary, but enough have been exhibited to demonstrate the fact that there are superior races of men in Africa, that these are even the characteristic races of the continent. Every new discovery exhibits this more clearly. The negro as he has been seen in the slave transported to other countries is no true type of the African man, but the continent is peopled by races capable of high attainments and indefinite civilization.

Though the negro of this country may not be of the best races of Africa, yet he is not of the worst, and as we shall have occasion to remark, he has had influences exerted, both as to race and character which much more than compensate for any possible inferiority of descent. We may fairly take the estimate of the native African as we find him at his best estate at home, and build a promise of the future of the African here upon it.

The African character has its own marked and distinctive peculiarities. It is tropical. It has passion deep and pervasive, slumbering within a rounded form and in deep dreamy eyes. It is ductile and plastic, ready to receive impressions and to be shapen by them. It does not posses the hard, aggressive features of the character of the tribes of Northern Europe; it does not seek by conquest to extend its power, or to mould other people to its form. It is adapted to receive rather than to give. It is therefore essentially imitative. From this comes the rapidity with which under favorable influences, the African advances in civilization. Wherever these influences are numerous and powerful enough to be the most prominent, the negro yields to them with marvellous rapidity.

There is, perhaps, no race that gives up so readily and fully old habits and associations. We find no granite formations of character underlying the race, such as are met with in the tribes and peoples of Asia. Compare, for instance, the plastic mobility of the Pangwee and Bakwain with the rigidity of the Hindu or Chinese. Or where the case may be seen in even a more striking way, compare the African negro with the American Indian; take the one from his tropical wilds, the other from his forest home, and place them both under the same civilizing