Among the wild animals are prodigious numbers of the vari-colored species of the gazelle, the bohur sassa, fecho, and madoqua. They are extremely numerous in the provinces depopulated _by war and slavery_, enjoying the wild oats of the deserted hamlets without fear of molestation from a returning population.--_Notes on Central Africa._ [12] "And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools, Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules, Gazed at the stars which stud yon tender blue, And hoped and deemed the cheat of death untrue." Though Socrates and Plato, particularly the former, are generally admitted by writers of authority, among whom, indeed, are Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner _suspected_ rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always run through the higher mythologies of the Negro. So notorious, indeed, was the fact among early Christians, that that ubiquitous riddle, "Prestor John," was, by believers, regarded as having a _locale_ in Central Africa; while Henry of Portugal actually despatched two ambassadors, Corvilla and Payvan, to a rumored Christian court, south of the Sahara.--_Edin. Encyc. Early Chris. His. Port._ [13] "Yet supple sophist to a plastic mind, Sees gods in woods, and spirits in the wind." The imagination of the African, like his musical genius, which extracts surprising harmony from the rudest of sources, the clapping of hands, the clanking of chains, the resonance of lasso wood, and perforated shells, seems to invest everything with a resident spirit of peculiar power. Accordingly, his mythologies are most numerous and poetical--his entire catalogue of superior gods alone, embracing a more extended length than the Assyro-Babylon Alphabet, with its three hundred letters. [14] "The vengeful causes and the deed forgot." All travellers agree in the facile ductility and inertia-like amiability of the native African character.--BREWSTER _on Africa._ [15] "The merry numbers of his crisp-haired crew." The negro race is, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human species. Their infancy and youth are singularly happy. The parents are passionately fond of their children.--GOLDBURY'S _Travels._ "Strike me," said my attendant, "but do not curse my mother." The same sentiment I found universally to prevail.