an elderly, well-made man, grey-headed, and over six feet high. Though
somewhat excited by our presence, he readily complied with the request to
call his people together, in order that all might know what our objects
were.

In commencing intercourse with any people we almost always referred to
the English detestation of slavery. Most of them already possess some
information respecting the efforts made by the English at sea to suppress
the slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and sell
cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, our errand
appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of their own self-
interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of the proposal is at
once admitted; and as a belief in a Supreme Being, the Maker and Ruler of
all things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, is
universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that we possess a Book
containing a Revelation of the will of Him to whom in their natural state
they recognise no relationship. The fact that His Son appeared among
men, and left His words in His Book, always awakens attention; but the
great difficulty is to make them feel that they have any relationship to
Him, and that He feels any interest in them. The numbness of moral
perception exhibited, is often discouraging; but the mode of
communication, either by interpreters, or by the imperfect knowledge of
the language, which not even missionaries of talent can overcome save by
the labour of many years, may, in part, account for the phenomenon.
However, the idea of the Father of all being displeased with His
children, for selling or killing each other, at once gains their ready
assent: it harmonizes so exactly with their own ideas of right and wrong.
But, as in our own case at home, nothing less than the instruction and
example of many years will secure their moral elevation.