FOOTNOTES:
[1] Leo Africanus says, Book vii., "The King of Borno sent for the merchants of Barbary, and willed them to bring the great store of horses; for in this country they used to exchange horses for slaves, and to give fifteen and sometimes twenty slaves for one horse; and by this means there were abundance of horses brought; howbeit, the merchants were constrained to stay for their slaves till the king returned home with a great number of captives and satisfied his creditors for their horses." "The king maketh invasions but every year once, and that at one set and appointed time of the year."—Geogr. Hist. of Africa, trans. by Pory, pp. 293, 294, Lon., 1600.
[2] "From Abyssinia, the caravans carry yearly to Cairo nearly two thousand Negroes, those poor creatures having unfortunately been captured in war. Most of the chiefs and sovereigns in the interior of Africa sell or put to death all their prisoners."—Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence at Tripoli, p. 185, London, 1816.
[3] Hegel, the distinguished German philosopher, in his Philosophy of History, says, pp. 102, 103:
An English traveler states that when a war is determined on in Ashantee, solemn ceremonies precede it. Among other things, the bones of the king's mother are laved with human blood. As a prelude to the war, the king ordains an onslaught upon his own metropolis, as if to excite the due degree of frenzy.
In Dahomey, when the king dies, the bonds of society are loosed; in his palace begins indiscriminate havoc and disorganization. All the wives of the king (in Dahomey their number is exactly 3,333) are massacred, and through the whole town plunder and carnage run riot. The wives of the king regard their deaths as a necessity; they go richly attired to meet it. The authorities have to hasten to proclaim the new governor, simply to put a stop to massacre.
The only essential connection that has existed and continued between the Negroes and Europeans is that of slavery. In this the Negroes see nothing unbecoming them; and the English, who have done most for abolishing the slave trade and slavery, are treated by the Negroes themselves as enemies. For it is a point of first importance with the kings to sell their captured enemies, or even their own subjects; and viewed in the light of such facts, we may conclude slavery to have been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among Negroes.
Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper. Among us, instinct deters from it, if we can speak of instinct at all as appertaining to man. But with the Negro this is not the case, and the devouring of human flesh is altogether consistent with the general principles of the African race; to the sensual Negro, human flesh is but an object of sense,—mere flesh. At the death of a king, hundreds are killed and eaten; prisoners are butchered, and their flesh is sold in the markets. The victor is accustomed to eat the heart of his slain foe. When magical rites are performed, it frequently happens that the sorcerer kills the first that comes in his way, and divides his body among the bystanders.
[4] Says Herder,—But the peculiar formation of the members of the human body says more than all these; and this appears to me applicable in the African organization. According to various physiological observations, the lips, breasts, and private parts, are proportionate to each other; and as nature, agreeably to the simple principle of her plastic art, must have conferred on these people, to whom she was obliged to deny nobler gifts, an ampler measure of sensual enjoyment, this could not but have appeared to the physiologist. According to the rules of physiognomy, thick lips are held to indicate a sensual disposition; as thin lips, displaying a slender, rosy line, are deemed symptoms of chaste and delicate taste; not to mention other circumstances. What wonder, then, that in a nation for whom the sensual appetite is the height of happiness, external marks of it should appear? A Negro child is born white; the skin round the nails, the nipples, and private parts, first become colored; and the same consent of parts in the disposition to color is observable in other nations. A hundred children are a trifle to a Negro; and an old man who had not above seventy, lamented his fate with tears.