Mon oeil de toute autre belle
N'apercoit plus le souris;
Le travail en vain m'appelle,
Mes sens sont aneantis.
[Footnote A: A favorite dance.]
[Footnote B: A kind of tambourine or drum made of a keg stretched with
skins, and sometimes hung with bells.]]
The dialect thus formed by the aid of traits common to many negro tribes
was a solution into which their differences fell to become modified;
when the barriers of language were broken down, the common African
nature, with all its good and evil, appeared in a Creole form. The
forced labor, the caprice of masters, and the cruel supervision of the
overseers engendered petty vices of theft, concealment, and hypocrisy.
The slave became meaner than the native African in all respects; even
his passions lost their extravagant sincerity, but part of the manliness
went with it. Intelligence, ability, adroitness were exercised in
a languid way; rude and impetuous tribes became more docile and
manageable, but those who were already disposed to obedience did not
find either motive or influence to lift their natures into a higher
life. An average slave-character, not difficult to govern, but without
instinct to improve, filled the colony. A colonist would hardly suspect
the fiery Africa whose sun ripened the ancestors of his slaves, unless
he caught them by accident in the midst of their voluptuous _Calenda_,
or watched behind some tree the midnight orgy of magic and Fetichism.
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