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