Negroes are not bad accountants; they calculate mentally with great rapidity, far surpassing Europeans in this respect.
The industrial arts are pursued with some success by many black tribes. Iron can be extracted from its ores easily enough to admit of the trades of founders and blacksmiths being carried on in every Negro village, and some excellent handicraftsmen in both these callings are to be found in Senegambia and several of the interior regions.
232.—FISHING ON THE UPPER SENEGAL.
Fermented drinks, such as beer, sorgho wine, &c., are also manufactured with considerable skill.
Negroes possess the talent of imitation to a very remarkable extent. They seize hold of and are able faithfully to mimic a person’s particular characteristics or behaviour if they show any ludicrous peculiarities. Negro humour is also generally gay and pleasant. They like to laugh at their masters and overseers, the children of the house, &c., and delight in making themselves merry at their expense.
Yet this imitative faculty inherent to blacks, does not go so far as to endow them with any artistic talents. Drawing, painting, and sculpture are unknown to Negroes, and it is impossible to infuse into them the smallest capacity for such subjects, either by lesson or advice. Their temples and dwellings are, in fact, only decorated with shapeless scratches; Africans of the present day are utterly unskilled in drawing and sculpture.