and bearing on their shoulders, as an additional penance, logs of wood of an enormous weight. Carli, having given some exhortation, caused the candles to be extinguished, after which these pious persons drew out leather thongs, and cords made of bark, with which they continued to whip themselves a whole hour without intermission.

But when the good fathers attacked the domestic customs of the country they met with a severe opposition, became upopular, and fell, beyond recovery, in the estimation of the natives. That which they attempted to destroy was not only the institution of polygamy, but another, by which those who were betrothed were permitted to live together for a short time before marriage, to make trial how far their tempers and inclinations agreed, during which interval either party might, without the smallest reproach, dissolve the connection.

The natives declared that it was great presumption in a handful of foreigners daring to attempt the subversion of their most ancient customs. The fathers threatened them with hell fire if they refused to adopt the marriage system of the Christians. The natives replied that they were quite content to go where their fathers had gone before them.

But the firmest opponents of these innovations were the women; and, as every one knows, a priesthood is only powerful when supported on female pillars. The ladies of the court, who despised the monks on account of their chastity, determined to take advantage of this pious weakness. Accordingly, they chose a rivulet which flowed before the garden of the missionaries as their place of bathing, and there exhibited themselves during the whole day, often in very indecent attitudes. The afflicted fathers laid their distress before the king, but soon found the evil doubled by this proof of the effect which it had produced. They had at last no remedy but to build a high wall in front of their garden.

Finally, these men, who had at first been almost worshiped, began to be looked upon with great contempt. Their preaching, their foreign aspect, and their ignorance, afforded no slight merriment to the Conghese. One favorite entertainment seems to have been to call to them that wild beasts were coming, to clamber with feigned haste up the trees, and to observe the vain attempts of the monks to perform that feat of agility. Even when I was in Angola I was able to buy a caricature, done by a negro, in which two absurd-looking missionaries were engaged in baptizing a child.

they have a taste for music, an aptness for language, and a perfect talent for mechanics. I think that their bodies ought to be trained before their minds, and that our churches on the Coast should be converted into workshops.

Such a society might begin its work by educating negroes in the useful handicrafts, and in sending them out as missionaries. They would, I am sure, make numerous converts; and such a scheme might possibly succeed as a commercial speculation. There is not much probability, I fear, of its being taken up by the philanthropists of progress, whose attention, however, it deeply merits.

Much has been said of the early arrestation of brain-growth in the negro. Up to a certain age, negro children, as Mrs. Walker, of Baraka, informed me, are quicker to learn than ours; but after a certain age they forget all that they have been taught, and become as stupid and as sensual as their fathers were before them. This has been described as a peculiarity of the negro. But it is very easily accounted for. The brain develops itself with the other organs of the body; when the other organs cease to grow the brain also ceases to grow; but it can be artificially expanded by education, by habits of thought, etc. Now, as a rule, as soon as a negro boy has finished his education with the missionary, he returns to his savage relations and becomes a savage. His brain no longer makes progress. On the contrary, it retrogresses. But let the mental faculties of the negro be continually exercised, which can only be done by rendering them of pecuniary service to him, and he will make the same progressive development as other people—the same in kind, though different in degree.

In illustration of this argument, I can cite instances of arrestation of brain-growth even in this island.

Robert Norris, a National school-boy, displays some remarkable talent for mathematics, for language, or for original composition. His parents persuade him to live with them. He becomes an agricultural laborer, and in a few years' time there is nothing to distinguish him from the clodhopper who works by his side, and who has never been to school at all.

Johannes Secundus obtains the Ireland, and a double-first at Oxford. His health is unimpaired; he has the talents of three What can be more brilliant than his prospects! But he obtains a Fellowship, and afterward a college living. In five years' time you go to see him. He reads you a drowsy sermon

men.

from the pulpit, talks to you of old Port, and misquotes a hackneyed passage from the Odyssey.

Celia, at twenty-two, is a charming and accomplished girl. She warbles at the piano like a nightingale; she paints a little, and she writes the most delicious sonnets in the world. She is ambitious; she is determined to become a great artist. On the contrary, she marries a rich fool; his stupidity annoys her, wearies her, and finally crushes her. She has children; she becomes domestic; she reads the "Family Herald." You left her a nymph, you return to find her a nurse.

Let

That is the whole secret of the arrestation of brain-growth in the negro. If they are more precocious than us, it is because they are more feminine than us, and therefore more instinctive. those instincts be carefully studied and trained, and the negro may be made much of in all those arts and crafts which do not require the creative faculty.

Since neither European commerce, nor military protection, nor Christian missions can civilize this country, what is to be done with it? Is it always to remain Savage Africa?

No, dear reader, the great work of progress is being accomplished, though without European aid, and though concealed from European eyes. The continent is being civilized; the Africans are being converted by means of a religion.

It is the same religion which, under different names and forms, has civilized the Hebrews through Moses, and the Western world through Jesus Christ. It is the religion of God, of which the outward laws and ceremonies so widely differ, but in which the divine element is always preserved unchanged.

Mohammed, a servant of God, redeemed the Eastern world. His followers are redeeming Africa.

The Africans are now in much the same state as were the Arabs before Mohammed. The laws, therefore, which that great proph et prescribed for the conversion of the one are perfectly suited to the other.

The Africans are drunkards. The Koran forbids them to touch wine or spirits. They are gamblers: in Northern Guinea a man will frequently gamble away his property, his wife and children, and himself. The Koran forbids gambling. They are vicious and voluptuous. The Koran forbids them to have more than four wives. They place no restraints upon their appetites. The

Koran compels them to keep an annual fast: during a whole month they are not allowed to touch food or drink between morning and night. The Africans are idolaters: they have human sacrifices, and many barbarous rites. The Koran abolishes all these.

The Africans are frivolous and effeminate: they spend their nights in singing and dancing. The Koran forbids such amusements. The musicians are no longer permitted to play and sing, saving canticles in honor of Mohammed.

The Africans are all of them thieves. They have no sense of honor in that respect. I have never yet had a negro servant (and I have had a great many) who did not rob me of some trifling article, whether he was pagan or Christian. But with my Mussulman I lost nothing. "God forbid !" cried Hassan, one day, in speaking of these thievish negroes, "that a Mandingo should steal!"

The Africans tell a lie more readily than they tell the truth. Falsehood, like petty larceny, is not recognized among them as a fault. But how different it is among the negroes who are Mussulmans! "One of the first lessons," writes Mungo Park, "in which the Mandingo women instruct their children, is the practice of truth. In the case of an unhappy mother whose son was murdered by the Moorish banditti, her only consolation in her uttermost distress was the recollection that the poor boy in the course of his blameless life had never told a lie."

The Africans have no written language, nor mental culture of any kind; but wherever the Mohammedans go, they take with them their marabouts and their Korans. In every Mohammedan town there is a public school and a public library. In the school, boys are taught to read the Koran, and to write it on a board with a charcoal pencil. It is curious to see one of these seminaries held under some shady tree in the centre of the village; the grave marabout in his blue robes, and with the little red cap of office on his head; and round him a number of negro boys, some of them as black as soot, bawling Arabic with facility, and handing up their boards to be corrected.

The public library consists chiefly of different copies of the Koran, some of them beautiful specimens of caligraphy. They have also very frequently the Arabic version of the Pentateuch, which they call Torat Mousa; the Psalms of David, el Zabour Dawidi; and even the Gospel of Jesus, el Indjil Isa. They also preserve

public registers and records, a study of which would be most interesting to the traveler who could read Arabic.

The great national vice of the Africans is their indolence. They have no athletic sports. They wonder at the white man who walks to and fro from the mere love of walking. But the Mohammedans, who forbid dancing, substitute for this exercise far better ones those of equestrianism, throwing the javelin, etc. Among the negroes the children lie all day in the sun. Among the Mohammedans they are ever active, and have a game in which they pelt each other with balls. This in itself is indicative of superiority. In the sports of children one may detect the instincts of a nation.

Thus the effeminacy of the African can be elevated by religious austerity. His barbarities can be abolished. His vices can be crushed.

The Mohammedans have ever been reproached because their religion sanctions polygamy, domestic slavery, and fanaticism.

Mohammed, finding that it would be impossible to forbid polygamy altogether, contented himself with restraining it. In his time there were chieftains who, like the King of Ashantee, had their 3333 wives. He forbade any Mussulman to marry more than four wives or concubines; he counseled them to content themselves with one. It will therefore be understood that the most pious Mussulmans are not polygamists. But polygamy is an institution which has a most salutary effect in redeeming Africa. The negress is frequently married, and thus she is brought into the same family as the women of a superior race. Thus her character is elevated; her children receive the same privileges as those of the other wives, and all invidious distinctions of color are destroyed. It was on this principle that Napoleon declared that polygamy must be authorized if they really wished to liberate the blacks of the colonies socially as well as legally. "Lorsqu'on voudra," he said, "dans nos colonies, donner la liberté aux noirs, et y établir une égalité parfaite, il faudra que la législation autorise la polygamie, et permette d'avoir à la fois une femme blanche, une noire, et une mulâtre. Dès lors les différentes couleurs, faisant partie d'une même famille seront confondues dans l'opinion de chacune."

Domestic slavery is sanctioned by the Mohammedan religion; and this slavery, by which in America the negro is degraded, is that which elevates him in Africa.