From the same authority, and others, we learn that seven-eighths of Africa is at present either savage or barbarous. This is the present condition of Africa, by nearly the unanimous voice of enlightened travelers, and scientific explorers.
According to Pritchard, "the Mumbas, a numerous and savage people who live at the east and northeast of Te-te, and at Chicorango, are cannibals."
Dos Sanctas says, "They have in their principal town a slaughter-house, where they butcher men every day."
We learn from Pritchard, that "the Zimbas, or Mazimbas, are a man-eating tribe near Senna." Also, that "the Múlúa tribe slaughter fifteen or twenty men every day."
It is a well-authenticated fact, that the subjects of the Great Macaco are anthropophagi, or cannibals. "This prince has a court so numerous, as to require two hundred men to be butchered every day to supply his table; a part of them criminals, and a part slaves furnished in the way of tribute." It is a part of history, both ancient and modern, that in the market-places in the principal towns and large villages throughout southern, and in portions of central Africa, Negro flesh is sold by the pound, as commonly as beef or mutton is sold throughout these United States; and what is worse, it in only the wealthy or more intelligent classes who are able to indulge in so great a luxury; while the poorer classes, the mass of the people, are envious spectators of the traffic in this so great a luxury, as to tempt them to every violence and crime to enable them to indulge in it.
SUPREMACY OF PAGANISM IN AFRICA.
This is the fate to which emancipation would consign the Negro. These are a few of the selected examples of the horrors of barbarism, furnished by historians, scientific travelers, and Christian missionaries, whose testimony, as eye-witnesses, has become history during the last few hundred years. Meanwhile, the light of civilization has blazed upon Africa from three quarters of the globe, even as the rays of the sun have enveloped the globe itself. Missionaries from Europe and America, from Rome, and London, and New York, have striven with a zeal and fidelity known only to religious enthusiasm, incited by mutual emulation, and armed with those terrors which awe the soul, those allurements which beguile the affections, and those fascinations which enkindle hope; but they have striven in vain against the colossal power of barbarism; and to-day, those heathen orgies which have darkened the annals of the world for four thousand years, are as sacred, to paganism in Africa, as are the rites and ceremonies of Christianity in London or in Rome.
Is this no evidence of the unfitness of the African for civilization? And is it just, in the sight of heaven, to force him from his present willing position of service to civilization, and consign him to a fate more terrible than even death itself!
THE AFRICAN RACE ON THIS CONTINENT.
Look at the African race on this continent, in this Republic, in Canada, and in the Islands of San Domingo and Jamaica. Compare the African in this Republic, under the wholesome regimen of civilization, with his emancipated brethren in the West Indies, or his recusant, fugitive brother in the Canadas. Has he not advanced here, and retrograded there? Compare his condition in these States, North and South. Why do the free States enact laws to prohibit the African from coming into them to settle? Is it because he is a civilized man, an equal, and a good citizen? Is it not rather, because the Anglo-Saxon race shuns the supposed contamination of barbarism? The wisdom of these prohibitory laws will be seen in the future time; when the idea of Negro equality has become exploded and obsolete; after the question of emancipation has served its purpose in political combination; but alas! not until the fallacy of negro equality has resulted in a mongrel race which will have spread itself like the shadow of a cloud over some of the fairest portions of freedom's heritage.