How much might these men have done for the good of Africa and the progress of the world! Following their lines of commerce, and cresting the high lands, which feed, with rains and rivulets, the Gambia and the Niger, as well as the streams by which they dwell, they might have saved two centuries of doubt and hazardous attempts, and much sacrifice of good and talented men. They might earlier have let in Christian civilization to repel the Moslem and redeem the negro. Portuguese influence is gone, and has left the world little reason to regret its extinction. On the rising and almost impervious forest-lands which are at the distance of from twenty to fifty miles back from the coast, these Portuguese mulattoes are still found, watching for their monopoly, with the same jealous exclusiveness as of old. These forests thus inhabited, form, at present, a serious obstacle to the extension of the influence of Liberia. An enterprising people, however, occupying the great tracts of cleared lands along the coast, which constitute the actual territories of the republic, will, with the progress of the settlements, and the increase of their power, soon be enabled, notwithstanding the short navigable distance of the rivers, to open communication with the far interior. The Portuguese founded cities and missions. A more extensive authority was gained by them over great and populous regions, both on the eastern and western shores, than has been attained by any other people. The title of “Lord of Guinea” was fairly claimed for the King of Portugal, by the establishment of this sovereign’s supremacy over various native kingdoms. But Portugal wanted the light and strength of a nation--a righteous and intelligent policy. The establishments on the east coast now scarcely keep their ground, ever shrinking before the barbarian and the Arab. St. Paul de Loando, on the southwest coast, is shrivelled down from its former greatness. Both regions have rich capabilities; both might have extended a useful influence, until they met and embraced in the centre, uniting these vast regions with the great movements of human progress; but they clung to the slave-trade, and its curse has clung to them. They misunderstood human nature, and overlooked its high destiny. Of the Spaniards and Portuguese concerned in slaving, Captain Dunlop, of the British Navy, long attached to the English squadron on the African coast, says: “They speak of the African as a brute, who is only fit to be made a slave of, and say that it is quite chimerical and absurd in us to attempt to put down the trade, or to defend men who were only born to be slaves.”