If so, it proves the important fact, that,
when the good qualities of the negro are crossed with a more advanced
race, the product will be marked with intelligence, mobility, spiritual
traits, and an organizing capacity. Felatah blood has mixed with white
blood in the Antilles; the Jolof and the Eboe have yielded primitive
affections and excellences to a new mulatto breed. This great question
of the civilizable qualities of a race cannot be decided by quoting
famous isolated cases belonging to pure breeds, but only by observing
and comparing the average quality of the pure or mixed.
When we approach the Slave Coast itself, strong contrasts in appearance
and culture are observable among the inhabitants; they are all negroes,
but in different social conditions, more or less liable to injury from
the presence of the slaver, and yielding different temperaments and
qualities to colonial life. The beautiful and fertile amphitheatre
called Whidah, in North latitude 6 deg., with Dahomey just behind it, is
populous with a superior race. Where did it come from? The area which
it occupies has only about fifty miles of coast and less than thirty of
interior; its people are as industrious and thrifty as any on the face
of the earth. They never raised sugar and indigo with enthusiasm, but at
home their activity would have interpreted to Mr. Carlyle a soul
above pumpkins.
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