CHA P. ed it in my journal: and yet he foon after ordered the pil II. lage to be executed. 22. On this occafion it happened that only one captive was taken. This was a handsome young negress, who, notwithstanding her tears, was forthwith carried on board a ship then lying off Joal. As fhe belonged, however, to one of those families who, by the laws of the country, are exempted from slavery, this action shocked the people fo much that a commotion enfued. The king having, by this time, come to his fenfes, and feeing the danger, entreated the purchafer to return the girl. The Frenchman, though furrounded by a great multitude of negroes, and though our party, including Dr. Sparrman, Captain Arrhenius, and myfelf, consisted but of five white men, was fo madly obstinate as to refuse his request. I fay madly, for in all the conjunctures of my life, I never was so alarmed for the safety of it. After much entreaty, however, he restored the young woman to her difconfolate relations, the king promifing him two flaves in exchange, whom he expected to feize on a future expedition. Proofs of the 23. The oppofers of the colonization of Africa would industry of the Africans. have it believed, that the natives are incurably stupid and indolent: but I have in my poffeffion the means of proving the contrary; for, on a question put to me in a committee of the British Houfe of Commons, I offered to produce fpecimens of their manufactures in iron, gold, fillagree work, leather, cotton, matting and bafket-work, fome of which equal any articles of the kind fabricated in Europe, and evince that, with proper encouragement, they would make excellent workmen. All men are idle till incited to induftry, by their natural or artificial wants. Their foil easily supplies their natural ncceflities, and the whites have never II. tried to excite in them any innocent artificial wants; nor in- CHA P. deed any other wants than those of brandy, baubles, tradeguns, powder and ball, to intoxicate or amufe their chiefs, and to afford them the means of laying wafte their country. 24. Even the leaft improved tribes make their own fishing tackle, canoes and implements of agriculture. I forgot to mention falt and foap, and dying among the manufactures of those I vifited, and who are by no means exempted from the evils of the flave-trade. If, even while that traffic difturbs their peace, and endangers their perfons, they have made fuch a progress, what may we not expect if that grievous obftacle were removed, and their ingenuity directed into a proper channel? 25. The flave-trade diflurbs their agriculture ftill more than their manufactures; for men will not be fond of planting who have not a moral certainty of reaping. Yet, even without enjoying that certainty, they raise grain, fruits, and roots, not only fufficient for their own confumption, but even to supply the demands of the European shipping, often to a confiderable extent. In fome islands and parts of the coaft, where there is no flave-trade, they have made great progrefs in agriculture. At the ifland of Fernando Po, in particular, they have fuch quantities of provisions, as to spare a sufficiency for all the shipping at Calabar, Del. Rey, and Camerones. In fome places, they bring their produce to the coaft on their heads, and return home loaded with European goods. Others go in armed bodies even a month's journey inland, with articles for trade. In fome places, they wood and water the ships, and hire themselves to the Europeans to work for low wages, both in boats and on shore. In short, their industry is in general proportioned II. CHA P. to their comparative civilization, to their own wants, to the demand for their labour, to their defire for European goods, and above all, to their total or partial exemption from the flave-trade *. 26. Refined nations form systems, and rife to generals: unpolished tribes dwell on detail, and trifle in particulars. The Africans are unacquainted with the dexterity and dispatch arifing from the division of labour, and with the numerous advantages of combined exertions fyftematically conducted. Except in works which, without united efforts, cannot be performed at all, they do every thing in a solitary, defultory manner. Each individual or family, like the peasants in fome parts of Europe, fpins, weaves, fews, hunts, fishes, and makes baskets, fishing-tackle and implements of agriculture; fo that, confidering the number of trades they exercise, their imperfect tools, and their still more imperfect knowledge of machinery, the neatness of fome of their works is really furprising. 27. Of their labour in concert, I shall give one example, of which I have been a spectator. The trees on the coast I vifited, being generally bent in their growth by the fea-breeze, and wanting folidity, are unfit for canoes. A tree of the proper dimenfions is therefore chofen, perhaps fourteen or fifteen miles up the country, which being cut into the requisite length, but not hollowed, left it should be rent by accident, or by the heat of the fun, the people of the nearest village draw it to the next, and thus fucceffively from village to village, till it reach the coast, where it is formed into a ca * See the evidence of Sir George Young, Captain Dalrymple, Captain Wilson, Captain Hall, Mr. Ellison, &c. in Minutes of Evidence before the House of Com mons. noe. noe. II. For this severe labour the villagers look for no other CHA P. reward than a feast and merry-making, which they enjoy in the true ftyle of rural fimplicity. 28. The same happy mixture of united labour and festivity takes place at building their houses; alfo in cultivating, planting or fowing their fields, belonging to the fame village, and in reaping the crop, which is confidered as the common property of the inhabitants. Such a practice in Europe would generate endless difputes; but among this fimple people, is the best bond of good neighbourhood. Such indeed is the amiable fimplicity of manners which reigns in the villages remote from the flave-trade, that European visitors are ready to imagine themselves carried into a new world, governed by the pureft maxims of patriarchal innocence. 29. But though few of them unite their strength, except on these, and a few fimilar, occafions, and most of them turn their hands to different occupations, we are not thence to conclude unfavourably of their intellects, any more than of the intellects of those European peasants, (in Sweden, Norway, Scotland, &c.) whofe practices are fimilar. On the contrary, Lord Kaimes has obferved, I think with much truth, that such peasants are generally more intelligent than artificers, to whom the divifion of labour, in manufacturing countries, has affigned one, fimple operation. A peasant, who makes and repairs his ploughs, harrows, and harness, his household furniture, and even his cloaths,has an ampler scope for his understanding, and really becomes a more intelligent being than he who spends his whole life in forging horsefhoes, making nails, or burnishing buttons. Such a being, confined for life to a few fimple motions, may be said, in fome degree, to lose the use of all his powers, but that of the CHA P. the muscles which perform those motions. His intellect III. lies dormant, for it's use is superseded by a mere animal habit. He becomes, in short, a kind of live machine, in the hands of some monied man, to contribute to the pride and luxury of drones, who poffefs no other talent than that of turning to their own account the activity of their poor brethren of mankind*. 30. I am unwilling to refine too much; but as the fituation of the Africans approaches much nearer to that of intelligent peasants than that of stupid mechanics, I am inclined to think that their intellects may have been improved by being fo variously exercised; for the natural way of improving the human intellect, is to afford it an ample field of action; and the sure way to cramp and contract it, is to keep it inceffantly plodding in one dull purfuit. Certain it is, that though, on the whole, paffion is more predominant in the African character than reason; yet their intellects are so far from being of an inferior order, that one finds it difficult to account for their acuteness, which fo far transcends their apparent means of improvement. CHA P. III. un- 31. Will and deriìanding, the leading faculties of the mind. N° CIVILIZATION IN GENERAL. one will deny that the will and the understanding are the leading faculties of the human mind. The will is actuated by love for, or affections to, some objects in * See Lord Kaimes's Sketches of the Hiftory of Man. pre |