have studied Blair or Whately, but the effusion is very creditable, and lifted him high among his peers.

5. A more sober style of thought and expression appears in the messages of the colored Presidents to their Legislature, as befits the dignity of their station. Many of our governors have not surpassed them. Good, sound sense has ever characterized these documents. Their policy is simple, their wants few, and their ambition is chastened by the necessities of their position. The power and influence which the official leaders have exercised over hostile or restless adjacent tribes are truly remarkable.

6. The peculiar condition of the people keeps them near the protecting providence of a superior Power, and they are not slow to inculcate this idea in their official documents. Armies and navies they have none. They rely for peace on the comity and good-will of enlightened foreign nations. And this has been extended to them freely and honorably. Of the interior of Africa, heretofore almost a blank on the map of the world, modern scientific travelers and religious missionaries are continually bringing new information. It is impossible that the labors and discoveries of such men as Moffatt, Livingstone, Barth, Bowen, and Wilson should be in vain. From them we learn of stalwart races, noble chiefs, in lands of singular fertility and abundant resources.

7. We hear of languages copious, mellifluous, and even systematic in their details, which, when reduced to a regular grammar, exhibit moods, tenses, and terminations almost as perfect as the Greek, Latin, or English. What is not the printing-press yet to achieve for Africa? How are the triumphs of Christianity yet to adorn that land?

8. An officer in the service of one of their kings had been degraded for some crime. He was saved from death by the intercession of the missionary. The sable warrior disdained the boon of life, if he was to be deprived of the rank and privileges, the badges and honors of his position,

and rejected the commutation of his sentence, which, to the astonishment of the other nobles, the missionary had obtained for him. Clasping, his hands on his bosom, he exclaimed: "Oh, king, afflict not my heart. I have merited thy displeasure. Let me be slain like the warrior. I can not live with the poor." Raising his hand to the ring he wore on his brow, he continued: "How can I live among the dogs of the king, and disgrace these badges of honor which I won among the spears and shields of the mighty? No, I can not live! Let me die, oh, Pezoolu!" And he was precipitated over the Tarpeian precipice into the yawning waters below, to be devoured by crocodiles. Such is African pride on one hand, and African despotism on the other. Christianity will humble the one, and destroy the other. There are Africans who have never been made slaves, even in regions where the slave trade has been triumphant. Such are the Kroomen, the watermen of the coast.

CHAPTER LXIX.

RESOURCES OF AFRICA.

BY DR. LIVINGSTONE.

1. DR. LIVINGSTONE, the celebrated African traveler, recently made an address before the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester, England, in which he spoke at length of the resources of Africa.

He said that the African ought to be encouraged to cultivate the raw materials of English manufactures; and he was so fully convinced of the elevating tendency of lawful commerce, together with the probable influence which the course specified promised to have on the slave trade and slavery, that he proposed to devote the next few years of

his life to special efforts in that direction. A peculiar and rather annoying combination of circumstances had placed the great Anglo-American race, on which undoubtedly the hopes of the world for liberty and progress rested, in a very trying position.

2. Our demands for sugar and cotton were daily increasing; those demands were at present met in a great measure by slave labor; but the great body of AngloAmericans would unquestionably prefer to have their wants supplied by free men, and he ventured to hope that the discovery of a new region, well adapted for raising those articles, might be a providential opening for enabling us to escape from our anomalous position.

3. Before attempting to give some idea of this new field for commercial enterprise, it might be mentioned that, while he proposed to try to make the Zambese River a permanent path to the inland healthy region, with a view to the wide diffusion of civilization and Christianity, and endeavoring to link the interests of the African with our own, he had felt that it would not be right in him to do this at the expense of those who contributed their money for purely religious purposes; but the gentlemen he now addressed, in common with others, had contributed handsomely, in the way of testimonial funds, to relieve his mind from care with respect to his family, and he begged to tender them his very grateful acknowledgments.

Mr. Cheetham, M. P., asked Dr. Livingstone what were the peculiar productions of the districts which he had visited?

4. Dr. Livingstone said, It would be observed that the country through which the Zambese flowed was abundantly watered by the numerous rivers which joined it. South of latitude twenty degrees there was a country remarkably destitute of water, where one might travel four full days without obtaining a single drop of water, there being no rivers south of that line; but the country to the north of it was totally different.

5. While in the south the vegetation was altogether thorny, there being a prodigious number of different kinds of thorns, the northern and well-watered country produced a vegetation without thorns. The majority of the trees there were evergreens; many of them had the appearance of laurels and orange-trees. In that country there were a great many different kinds of fruit, most of which he believed to be totally unknown to Europeans. He brought home about twenty-five or twenty-six different kinds of fruit, some of which were valuable as yielding oil. Nearer to the coast, eastward, the people cultivated large quantities of cucumbers; and their best salad oil was made from the seeds of the cucumbers.

6. Throughout the whole country the ground-nut was cultivated in large quantities—used as food and for oil. In Angola the natives knew of a very great many different dyes, which they were not very willing to make known to Europeans. In reference to cotton, very large quantities of it were cultivated by the natives, and one small district, between the rivers Conza and Loanda, produced 1,300 cloths annually of cotton, grown by the natives, spun by the women, and woven by the men.

The west coast was by far the best field for cotton. On the east it was cultivated a little, but it was not so good. It clung to the seed, and an iron roller had to be used to separate it. The quantity grown on the east side was very much smaller than on the west side, but the natives had never been induced to cultivate cotton; they had never been offered anything for it, and they only cultivate a little to make clothes for themselves. He believed, if they had a market, they would cultivate largely; for wherever they had the opportunity of selling anything, they immediately began to collect it.

In

7. There was a trade between Loando and Brazil in wax, which was necessary for the churches in Brazil. the central country the people had no idea that sugar could be got from the sugar-cane, although the sugar-cane

abounded in their country; and when he told them of it, the chief asked him to make some. He explained that it could only be done by machine. Then, asked the chief, would he bring him a machine from his own country? He explained that he was a poor man, and it required something considerable to purchase one. The chief replied: "Why, the whole of the ivory of the country is yours, and if you leave any of it, it is your own fault." Angola produced beautiful wheat, and he saw it growing on the high lands with ears the length of the hand. The high land produced it without irrigation, and it might be grown there to almost any extent.

8. The east side of the country also produced wheat. The Zambese overflowed large tracts of country annually, like the Nile. The Portuguese had been in the habit of cultivating the wheat on that side of the country; all it required was, that a slave woman with a little hoe should make a hole in the ground, drop a few seeds in, and push back the soil with her foot. In four months there was a crop of beautiful wheat. This simple operation answered all the purposes of our subsoiling, plowing, draining liming, and manuring. The higher they went up, the better the wheat was. In reply to subsequent inquiries, Dr. Livingstone said there were extensive tracts of forest land. There were nine seams of coal. He examined one near Tete, which was about sixty-eight inches in diameter; the coal having been tilted to the surface by volcanic action. Lieutenant Hoskins, who had command of one of the gunboats now gone to China, had given his opinion that the bar at the real mouth of the Zambese, was no impediment to commercial purposes, as there were twenty-two feet of water upon it; and, though the river was rather tortuous, he would not hesitate to take up a steamer of the same capacity as his gunboat. The river was at the flood during four or five months of the year.