II. chants of Liverpool to the Lords of the Privy CHAP. Council, and it is undoubtedly as authentick and particular a return as can possibly be obtained: viz. Of which Gambia furnishes about Isles Deios, and the adjacent No. 700 1,500 Or the miserable people thus condemned to perpetual exile and servitude, though born in various and widely-separated countries, it is not easy to discriminate the peculiar manners and native propensities. The similar and uniform system of life to which they are all reduced; the few opportunities and the little encouragement that are given them for mental improvement; are circumstances that necessarily induce a predominant and prevailing cast of character and disposition. "The day," says Homer, "which makes man a slave, takes away half his worth," and, in fact, he loses II. loses every impulse to action, except that of CHAP. fear. Nevertheless, there are among several of the African nations some striking and predominant features, which cannot easily be overlooked by a person residing in any one of the sugar plantations. These peculiarities I shall endeavour to describe with candour and impartiality; after which, I shall attempt a delineation of their general character, as it is displayed under all the various modifications and circumstances of original habits, and present situation and condition. CHAP. CHAP. III. Mandingoes, or Natives of the Windward Coast, -Mahometans. Their wars, manners, and persons.--Koromantyn Negroes, or Natives of the Gold Coast.-Their ferociousness of disposition displayed by an account of the Negro rebellion in Jamaica in 1760.-Their nation manners, wars, and superstitions.— Natives of Whidah or Fida.-Their good qualities.-Nagoes.-Negroes from Benin. -Persons and tempers.-Canibals.-Natives of Kongo and Angola.—Survey of the character and dispositions of Negroes in a state of slavery. BOOK MOST, if not all, the nations that inhabit that IV. part of Africa which lies to the northward and eastward of Sierra Leone, are Mahometans; and following the means of conversion prescribed by their prophet are, as we are told, perpetually at war with such of the surrounding nations as refuse to adopt their religious tenets, The prisoners taken in these religious wars furnish, I doubt not, great part of the slaves which are exported from the factories on the Windward Coast; and it is probable that death would be the fate of most of the captives, if purchasers were not to be met with. BUT III. BUT the Mandingoes have frequent wars CHAP. with each other, as well as with such nations as they consider enemies of their faith; and I am afraid that some of these wars arise from motives even less justifiable than religious zeal. An old and faithful Mandingo servant, who stands at my elbow while I write this, relates, that being sent by his father to visit a distant relation in a country wherein the Portuguese had a settlement, a fray happened in the village in which he resided; that many people were killed, and others taken prisoners, and he himself was seized and carried off in the skirmish; not, as he conceives, by a foreign enemy, but by some of the natives of the place; and being sent down a river in a canoe, was sold to the captain of the ship that brought him to Jamaica. Of his national customs and manners he remembers but little, being, at the time of his captivity, but a youth. He relates, that the natives practise circumcision, and that he himself has undergone that operation; and he has not forgot the morning and evening prayer which his father taught him; in proof of this assertion, he chaunts, in an audible and shrill tone, a sentence that I conceive to be part of the Alcoran, La illa, ill illa! (a), which he says they sing aloud at the first appearance of the new moon. He relates, moreover, that in (a) There is no God, but God, |