While these several tribes have their distinctive peculiarities, they yet bear a strong general resemblance to each other, not only iu their physical appearance, but in their intellectual capacities, moral instincts, customs, and manners. The negro intellect is generally acknowledged to be inferior not only to the European, but to that of many primitive races not as yet brought within the pale of civilization, while it is superior to that of the Australians, Bushmen, and Esquimaux. Some tribes are sunk in the lowest depths of barbarism, and arc either ferocious savages, or stupid, sensual, and indolent. This is the case, for the most part, according to Prichard, where the exagguated negro type is discernible, as among the Bulloms, Papals.nnd other tribes on the roast of West ern Guinea; also among the tribes near the slave coast, and in the bight of Benin, where the slave-trade has been carried on to the greatest extent. In other parts they show a capacity for practicing the arts of life. They are ingenious in the construction of their dwellings, they have sonic knowledge of the working of iron and other metals, they manufacture arms, dress and prepare the skins of animals, weave cloth, and fabricate numerous useful household utensils. Neither are they altogether deficient in a knowledge of agriculture. These marks of civilization are, for the most part, apparent in the dis tricts either wholly or partially converted to Mohammedanism. 3lungo Park, in his account of Sego, the capital of Bambarra, describes it as a city of 30,000 inhabitants, with houses of two stories high, having flat roofs, mosques in every quarter, and ferries con veying men and horses over the Niger. "The view of this extensive city," he says, " the numerous canoes upon the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa." All tribes of appear to be passionately fond of music, and show no little skill in the manufacture of musical instruments. They also express their hopes and fears in extemporary songs. Where :Mohammedanism has not been introduced, the religion of the negroes is nothing but a debased Atish worship. They make fetishes of serpents, elephants' teeth, tigers' claws, and other parts of animals, at the dictation of their fetish man, or priest. They also mannfzieturc idols of wood and stone, which they worship; and yet, under all this, they have some idea of a Supreme Bei They believe in good and evil spirits, and arc per petually practicing incantations to ward off the baneful influence of their spiritual ene mies. Their religion, in fact, is one altogether of fear; and as this generally leads to cruelty, we find them for the most part indifferent to the sacrifice of human life. In some parts they even offer up human victims to propitiate their deities. They are cruel to their enemies and prisoners, and often shed blood for the mere savage delight they experience in seeing it flow from their victims. We need only allude to tile inhuman customs, as they are called, of Dahomey, and the Yam and Adai eustonzs of the Ashantees, as described by Bowdich, in support of this statement.
This same indifference to human suffering, coupled with the passion of avarice, has doubtless been the mainspring of the slave-trade carried on during so many centuries between the negroes and European traders in the western coast of Africa. Begun by the Portuguese as early as 1503, when negro slaves were first imported into the West Indies, sanctioned by Ferdinand of Aragon in 1511, and subsequently by Charles V., legalized in England under Elizabeth, and eventually practiced by every maritime nation of Europe, this infamous trade flourished under the sanction of law as late as the year 1807, when it was happily abolished by act of parliament in Great Britain, and is now treated as piracy by almost every civilized nation. Even still, however, it is practiced
by lawless men, notwithstanding the humane efforts of Great Britain, France. and the United States to suppress it; and the encouragement which it has given to the petty chieftains on the slave coast, and the country behind it, to enrich themselves at the expense of their fellow-countrymen, has contributed more than anything else to retard the progress of civilization in that part of Africa. "The region mentioned," says Prichard, "has been the great seat of the exportation of negro slaves, and the tribes on the coast have been reduced to the lowest state of physical and moral degradation by the calamities and vices attendant on that traffic. Throughout negroland, and especially this part of it, the inhabitants of one district in the interior, the dwellers on one moun tain, are ever on the watch to wives and children of the neighboring clans, and to sell them _to strangers; - many sell their own. Every recess, and almost every retired of the land, has been the scene of hateful rapine and slaughter, not to be excused or palliated by the spirit of warfare, but perpetrated in cold blood, and for the love of gain." The custom of polygamy prevails among all the negro tribes, and where these are constituted into nations or kingdoms, as in Dahomey, the sovereiem has often as many as two or three thousand wives, whom he occasionally disposes of as presents to his chief officers and favorites.
The languages of the various nations and tribes of negroes are very numerous. Vocabularies of nearly 200 languages have been brought from Africa by the rev. Dr. Koelle. "A slight examination of these vocabularies," says Mr. Edwin N'o•ris, "seems to show that there are among the negro idioms a dozen or more classes of languages, dif fering from each other as much as the more remote Indo-Germanic languages do." To these negro idioms Dr. Krapf has given the name of Nigro-Hamitic languages. These may perhaps have affinities with seine of the other African tongues, but not with any of the great well-defined families of languages. For further information upon this subject, we must content ourselves with referring to Dr. Priehard's Natural History of 112ra a, and especially to a learned note by Mr. Edwin Norris, in vol. i. of that work, page 323.
Of the condition and prospects of the negroes in the various countries into which they have been imported during the prevalence of the slave-trade, we have scarcely room to speak. They found in all the West India islands, to the number of about 3,000,000; in the United States, Brazil, Peru, cud other parts of South America; also in the Cape de Verde islands, Arabia, Morocco, etc. In the British West India islands they were eman cipated from slavery in 1834, and in those belonging to France in 1848. Indeed, slavery now exists nowhere in the West Indies, with the single exception of Cuba. In the United States the negroes amounted in 1870 to 4,880,009. Many of these.were emanci pated in the course of the late unhappy civil war, all the negroes of secession masters being declared emancipated by proclamation of president Lincoln and act of the federal congress; at the same time that indemnities were promised to such loyal states as of their own accord decreed emancipation. Negro slavery in the United States has been utterly destroyed, and the great problem which used to exercise philanthropic minds has been solved—the negro having become a United States citizen at a fearful cost of blood and treasure to both their possessors and their liberators.