Note B — Chapter VII

Note—Professor Draper, in his "History of the American Civil War" thus represents the condition of the negro in his native land. "The Negro in Africa."

"On the west coast of Africa, the true negro-land, the thermometer not infrequently stands at 120° in the shade. For months together it remains, night and day, above 80°. The year is divided into the dry and the rainy season; the latter setting in with an incessant drizzle, continues until May. It culminates in the most awful thunderstorms and overwhelming rains. This is particularly the case in the mountains. When the dry season has fairly begun a pestiferous miasm is engendered from the vast quantities of vegetable matter brought down into the low lands by torrents. From the fevers thus arising the negroes themselves suffer severely.

"Moisture and heat, thus so fatal in their consequences to man, give to that country its amazing vegetable luxuriance. For hundreds of square miles there is an impenetrable jungle, infested with intolerable swarms of musquitoes. The interior is magnificently wooded. The mangrove thickets that line the river banks upon the coast are here replaced by a dark evergreen verdure, interspersed with palms and aloes. A rank herbage obstructs the course of the streams. The crocodile, hippopotamus, pelican find here a suitable abode. Monkeys swarm in the woods; in the more gloomy recesses live the chimpanzee, gorilla and other anthropoid apes approaching man most closely in stature and habits of life. In the open land—the prairie of equatorial Africa—game is infrequent; there are a few antelopes and horned cattle, but no horses. Man—or perhaps more truly woman—is the only beast of burden.

"Plantains, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, ground-nuts, Indian corn, the flesh of the deer, antelope, bear, snake, furnish to the negro, his food. He lives in a hut constructed of bamboo or flakes of bark, thatched with matting or palm leaves. His villages are often palisaded. Too lazy, except when severely pressed, to attend to the labors of the field, he compels his wives to plant the roots or seeds, and gather the scanty harvest. In hunting and in war, his main occupation, he relies upon cunning and will follow his prey with surprising agility, crawling like a snake prone upon the ground. He has little or no idea of property in land; slaves are his currency; he makes his purchase and pays his debts with them. 'A slave is a note of hand that may be discounted or pawned. He is a bill of exchange that carries himself to his destination, and pays a debt bodily. He is a tax that walks corporeally into the chieftain's treasury.'

"Ferocious in his amours, the African negro has no sentiment of love. The more wives he possesses the richer he is. If he inclines to traffic, each additional father-in-law is an additional trading connection; if devoted to war, an ally. His animal passions too often disdain all such mercenary suggestions; he brings home new wives for the sake of new gratifications. Fond of ornaments, his prosperity is displayed in thick bracelets and anklets of iron or brass. An old European hat or a tattered dress-coat, without any other article of clothing is a sufficient badge of kingship. He inclines to nocturnal habits. He will spend all the night lolling with his companions on the ground at a blazing fire, though the thermometer may be at more than 80°, occupying himself in smoking native tobacco, drinking palm wine and telling stories about witches and spirits. He is an inveterate gambler, a jester and a buffoon. He knows nothing of hero-worship; his religion is a worship of fetiches.

"They are such objects as the fingers and tails of monkeys, human hair, skin, teeth, bones, old nails, copper chains, claws and skulls of birds, seeds of plants. He believes that evil spirits walk at the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. He welcomes the new moon by dancing in her shine. Whatever misfortune or sickness befalls him, he imputes to sorcery and punishes the detected wizard or witch with death. He determines guilt by the ordeal of fire: the accused who can seize a red-hot copper ring without being burned is innocent. His medicine-man—a wind raiser and rain-maker—pursues his main business of exorcism in a head-dress of black feathers, with a string of spirit-charms around his neck and a basket of snake-bone incantations. The more advanced tribes have already risen to idol worship; they adore grotesque figures of the human form, and following the course through which intelligence in other races has passed, they have wooden gods who can speak and nod and wink.

"In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro nevertheless shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager trader, and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm oil, ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently he can out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc and other products he brings down to the coast and pass them off as pure. His color secures him from the detection of a blush when he lies. Though utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is not unskillful in the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes of clay; he has a bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce iron from its ores and manufacture it. He makes shields of elephants' hide, cross-bows, and other weapons of war. But in the construction of musical instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. From drums of goat-skins, from harps and gourds, he extracts their melancholy sounds and disturbs the nocturnal African forests with his plaintive melodies.

"It has been affirmed by those who have known them well, that the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages of miasmic fever, which in its most malignant form will often destroy its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken as a prophylactic no white man can enter their country with impunity. The night dews are absolutely mortal."