The Mountains of the Moon, as they terminate along the western coast of Africa, spread out into a succession of mountain plains. These present three lofty fronts toward the sea, each surrounded with terraces, declining gradually into the lowlands, each threaded with fertilizing streams, and fanned with ocean breezes.
The most northern of these plateaus, with their declivities and plains, forms the delightful land of one of the most powerful and intelligent of the African tribes, namely, the Mandingoes. They are made up of shrewd merchants and industrious agriculturists; kind, hospitable, enterprising, with generous dispositions, and open and gentle manners. Not far from the Mandingoes, are the people called Solofs, whom Park describes as “the most beautiful, and at the same time the blackest people in Africa.”
But perhaps the most remarkable people among these nations are the “Fulahs,” whose native seat is the southern part of the plateaus above described. Here, in their lofty independence, they cultivate the soil, live in “clean and commodious dwellings,” feed numerous flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of oxen and horses, build mosques for the worship of one God, and open schools for the education of their children.
Timbri, their capital, is a military station, containing nine thousand inhabitants, from which their victorious armies have gone forth and subdued the surrounding country. They practice the mechanic arts with success, forge iron and silver, fabricate cloth, and work skilfully with leather and wood. Like the Anglo-Saxon, their capital has been the hive whence colonies have swarmed forth to form new settlements, and extend the arts of industry; and the “Fellatahs,” an enterprising people who dwell a thousand miles in the interior, are well known to belong to the same stock.
There are many other nations, or rather, tribes, in this vast central region, described by Pritchard more or less minutely, variously advanced in the arts of life, and exhibiting various degrees of enterprise and energy.
Passing along the western shore southward, we next come to the coast of Guinea, where we find the Negro in his worst state of degradation. Hither comes the slave-trader for his wretched cargo, and hence have been exported the victims of that horrible commerce, which supplied the slave-marts of the western world. The demonizing influence of this traffic on the character of the natives defies all description.
In the mountains and ravines of this portion of Africa lurk gangs of robbers, ever on the watch to seize the wives and children of the neighboring clans and sell them to the traders. Every corner of the land has been the scene of rapine and blood. Parents sell their children, and children sell their parents. Such are the passions stimulated by Christian gold, and such the state of society produced by contact with Christian nations. These people, degraded and unhumanized by the slaver, are the progenitors of the black population of the Southern States of the American Union.
Still we are to observe, that though the lowest type of Negro character is to be found on the Guinea coast and the adjacent region, it is not uniformly degraded. Tribes are to be found, considerably advanced in civilization, whose features and characters resemble those of the central region which we have just described.
Passing southward still farther, and crossing the line, we come into southern Africa. This whole region from the equator to the Cape, with the exception of the Hottentots, is, so far as discovered, occupied by what is called the “Great South African Race.” They are a vast family of nations, speaking dialects of the same language, furnishing incontrovertible evidence, so says Pritchard, of “a common origin.”
There is one fact, in reference to them, of absorbing interest; it is that among these nations, and sometimes among the same tribe, are found specimens of the lowest Negro type, and specimens of the same type elevated and transfigured so as to approximate far towards the European form and features. Between these two there is every possible variety, and the variations depend much on moral condition and physical surroundings. Along the coast humanity generally sinks down into its lowest shapes, and puts on its most disgusting visage.