onsidered a great
calamity, the remains are either exhumed and brought back to the old
familiar scenes, or, if the distance be too great, three stones are
taken to the last resting place and, after three days in the case of a
male, or four days in the case of a female, the spirit is supposed to
have entered the stones, and the latter are brought to the old town
and _buried_.

Is it not possible, then, that the _nomolis_ are real pictures of some
ancient Sherbro men and women, and that these people, dying away from
"home, sweet home," their images, after having supposedly received
their spirits, were interred in the old homeland? I believe the Rev.
Dr. Hayford in his "Ethiopia Unbound" suggests that Ethiopia or
Negrodom was once the mistress of the world; that much-talked-of Egypt
was but a province of hers, and the pharaohs not real kings, but
merely governors sent from the mother country. If this be true, might
it not be that some of these _nomolis_ are sculptures of eminent men
and women, natives of the region now known as Sherbroland, who went to
far-away Egypt as Empire builders, lost their lives in the land of the
sphynx; and, since distance prevented the return of their bodies,
their busts, after receiving their imperishable parts, were brought
back home and buried with due solemnity "under the stately walls of
Troy?"

WALTER L. EDWIN

SIERRA LEONE, WEST AFRICA

DOCUMENTS

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEGROES OF LOUISIANA

To present a broad view of the Negroes concerned in this and the
subsequent series of documents we have given below accounts appearing
from decade to decade, written by men of different classes and of
various countries. Some received one impression and some another, as
the situation was viewed from different angles. In the mass of
information, however, there is the truth which one may learn for
himself.

CONSIDERATIONS SUR L'ESCLAVAGE; NEGRES LIBRES; MULATRES DE LA
LOUISIANE, 1801

L'esclavage, le plus grand de tous les maux necessaires, soit
relativement a ceux qui l'endurent, soit par rapport a ceux qui
sont contraints d'en employer les victimes, existe dans toute
l'etendue des deux Louisianes. Il ne seroit pas facile de
determiner pendant combien d'annees la partie septentrionale en
aura besoin; mais on peut assurer qu'il doit exister bien des
siecles encore dans le Midi si le Gouvernement veut y encourager