ing eyes; in
those full pouting lips, large smiling mouths, and
complexions of a warm and copper-colored tint,--you will
recognize the true African type, the women-men of the Old
World, of which the Negroes are the base, the depraved
caricatures."[67]

But the Negro is not beyond the influences of civilization and
Christianization. Hundreds of thousands have perished in the cruel
swamps of Africa; hundreds of thousands have been devoured by wild
beasts of the forests; hundreds of thousands have perished before the
steady and murderous columns of stronger tribes; hundreds of thousands
have perished from fever, small-pox, and cutaneous diseases; hundreds
of thousands have been sold into slavery; hundreds of thousands have
perished in the "middle-passage;" hundreds of thousands have been
landed in this New World in the West: and yet hundreds of thousands
are still swarming in the low and marshy lands of Western Africa. Poor
as this material is, out of it we have made, here in the United
States, six million citizens; and out of this cast-away material of
Africa, God has raised up many children.

To the candid student of ethnography, it must be conclusive that the
Negro is but the most degraded and disfigured type of the primeval
African. And still, with all his interminable woes and wrongs, the
Negro on the west coast of Africa, in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as
well as in the southern part of the United States, shows that
centuries of savagehood and slavery have not drained him of all the
elements of his manhood. History furnishes us with abundant and
specific evidence of his capacity to civilize and Christianize. We
shall speak of this at length in a subsequent chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] See Keith Johnson's Map of Africa, 1863.

[64] Savage Africa, pp. 403, 404.

[65] Savage Africa, p. 400.

[66] Savage Africa, p. 412.

[67] Savage Africa, p. 430.

CHAPTER VII.

AFRICAN IDIOSYNCRASIES.

PATRIARCHAL GOVERNMENT.--CONSTRUCTION OF VILLAGES.--NEGRO
ARCHITECTURE.--ELECTION OF KINGS.--CORONATION
CEREMONY.--SUCCESSION.--AFRICAN QUEENS.--LAW, CIVIL AND
CRIMINAL.--PRIESTS.--THEIR
FUNCTIONS.--MARRIAGE.--WARFARE.--AGRICULTURE.--MECHANIC
ARTS.--BLACKSMITHS.

All the tribes on the continent of Africa are under, to a greater or
less degree, the patriarchal form of government. It is usual for
writers on Africa to speak of "kingdoms" and "empires;" but these