heard a negro assert, with the unblushing effrontery which animates the
Exeter Hall speechifier, that at some African den of thieves men leave
their money with impunity in the storehouse or on the highway. I read the
assertion of a mulatto, who well knew the contrary, 'A white man who
supposes himself respected in Africa, because he is white, is grievously
mistaken.' The 'aristocracy of colour' is a notable and salient fact in
Africa, where the chiefs are lighter hued and better grown than their
subjects; and the reason is patent--they marry the handsomest women.

Finally, the Sá Leonite is the horror of Europeans on the West Coast. He
has been formally expelled by his neighbours, the Liberians. At Lagos and
Abeokuta he lost no time in returning to his original fetishism, which the
'recaptive' apparently can never throw off. Moreover, he became an
inveterate slave-dealer, impudently placing himself under native
protection, and renegading the flag that saved the crime-serf from
lifelong servitude. These 'insolent, vagabond loafers' were the only men
who gave me much trouble in the so-called 'Oil rivers,' where one of them
accused a highly respected Scotch missionary of theft. Finally, the Gaboon
merchants long preferred forfeiting the benefits of the mail-steamers to
seeing themselves invaded by a locust tribe, whose loveliest view is,
apparently, that which leads out of Sá Leone.

Part of this demoralisation arose from the over-tenderness of the British
Government, in deference to the philanthropist and the missionary.
Throughout the Bights of Benin and Biafra, where the chief stalks about
with his fetishman and his executioner, there is still some manliness
amongst men, some modesty amongst women. There the offending wife fears
beheading and 'saucy water;' here she leaves with impunity her husband,
who rarely abandons the better half. Consequently the sex has become
vicious as in Egypt--worse than the men, bad as these are. Petty larceny