“But can I not communicate with her? will she not write to me?” eagerly inquired the other.
“Be satisfied that it is impossible she should forget you, and endeavour to prove to her without the aids of continual correspondence, that in your affection the same durability exists.”
“I will! I will!” cried Oriel; “I will do all she would have me. I will follow the plan my father has laid out, even to the minutest details; will try to find patience for its endurance by thinking of the blissful result with which it will be crowned. We are now approaching the southern coast of Africa,” he continued after a pause of some duration, which neither had attempted to interrupt; “and my immediate destination Caffreton, the great mart of traffic in this part of the world is the first point of my commercial voyage. My father has written me very full instructions which I have carefully studied, and you will shortly see, Zabra, how well I shall be able to play the merchant.”
They had been standing together on the deck gazing upon the world of waters before them during the preceding dialogue, and were now silently observing the progress of some distant vessels, when they were joined by the learned Professor Fortyfolios. Addressing Oriel, he said—
“That portion of land you observe yonder, rising out of the sea, is an important Cape, well known in the annals of navigation, and was called by the ancients the Cape of Good Hope. It used to be celebrated for producing an inferior wine, called Cape Wine, which being cheap, as it was worthless, was brought in considerable quantities for the purpose either of adulterating wines of a higher value, or was palmed upon the ignorant as the produce of a different vintage. The English, a people with whose history you are doubtless familiar, though not wine growers, were the greatest wine consumers of that period, and it was the immense demand for this necessary of life among that people, which the wines of Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Italy, France, Germany, and other countries, could not sufficiently supply, that brought this Cape into notice. The African wines are now remarkable for their admirable qualities. That it was the search after new liquors that sent the English into this part of the world chroniclers are not agreed, and that there were other wines produced in the same locality much superior in flavour, I think is more than probable, because I have found in the course of my reading, eloquent commendation of an African wine, called Constantia, and I have good reason for imagining that the deserts which the first voyagers of that nation met with on some portions of the coast, when they ascertained that a superior liquor was here procurable, originated the English proverb ‘Good wine needs no bush.’ However, there can be no doubt that the English planted a colony at this very Cape; gradually drove the natives from their land as they increased in power and numbers, till the whole continent from the Cape of Good Hope to Alexandria, and from Abyssinia to Senegambia, acknowledged their sway, and, in a great measure, spoke their language.”
“Truly, those English were a great people!” remarked Oriel.
“They were so,” said the Professor; “when we consider what they did, and the means they had to do it, we must acknowledge that they deserve the epithet, ‘great.’ At an early period of the world’s history, England was utterly unknown. In the times of Assyrian greatness, in the eras of Babylon, of Jerusalem, and of Troy—and in the more brilliant ages of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Carthaginians, such an island had never been heard of—scarcely two thousand years had elapsed before this speck upon the waters became the most powerful kingdom upon the earth. She had possessions in every quarter of the globe; her conquering armies had penetrated into the remotest regions, and her gallant navies had triumphed in every sea. She had given a new people and a new language to the vast continent of America; she had founded a new division of the world in Australia; she had been acknowledged the mistress of the mighty Indies; she had forced a path through deserts of perpetual ice, and found a home in the scorching heat of the torrid zone. And by this time what had become of the nations of a more remote antiquity? Of some, the localities were not to be traced; others remained a heap of stones. The Carthaginians were extinct—the free and noble Greeks had become slaves or pirates—and the daring Romans, who boasted having conquered the world, were an ignoble emasculated race, confined to a single city and its suburbs, and governed by a despotic old woman in the shape of a priest.”
“The form of government under which the people of this continent exists, is republican, I believe;” observed Master Porphyry.
“The whole is divided into a multitude of republics, some of which are always at war with one another,” replied his tutor; “and they show their idea of liberty, of which they make the most preposterous boast, by keeping up a system of slavery the most tyrannical and revolting that can be imagined.”
“Ay, ay,” exclaimed Captain Compass, coming up and joining in the conversation; “it’s the way of the world. Hear your most famous spouter about the blessings of freedom and all that sort of thing, and ten to one if you don’t find him ready to domineer over every body beneath him. When I hear a fellow mighty fine in his notions of universal liberty, I always feel pretty certain that he only wants the power to trample on the independence of all who might stand in the way of his particular enjoyments. But this is all natural enough; the feeble are monstrously indignant at the exercise of power in the hands of their rulers; but when by any accident they become powerful, they all at once see the advantages of keeping down those who are down, and in a very short time become just as despotic as those of whom they complained.”