Some of the first lessons in which the Mandings women instruct their children is the _practice of truth_. It was the only consolation for a negro mother, whose son had been murdered by the Moors, that "_the boy had never told a lie_."--PARK'S _Travels._ [16] "With all the father sees each form retire, A ruthless heathen, but a loving sire." "Or led the combat, bold without a plan, An artless savage, but a fearless man." CAMPBELL. [17] "Till lured by wealth the hardy Portuguese, Sought the green waters of his Eastern seas, And venturous nations more excursive grown, Pierced his glad coast from radiant zone to zone." Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, was the first to discover a maritime passage to the Indies; unless, perhaps, we credit the improbable achievement of the Phoenicians, related by Herodotus as occurring, 604 B.C. De Gama doubled the cape in 1498, explored the eastern shores as far as Melinda, in Zanguebar, and sailing thence arrived at Calcutta in May. This expedition, second to none in its results, save that of Columbus six years before, drew the attention of all Europe. Whole nations became actuated by the same enthusiasm, and private companies of merchants sent out whole fleets on voyages of discovery, scouring the entire coast from Cape Verd to Gaudfui, and discovering the Mascharenhas and most of the islands of the Ethiopean Archipelago. [18] "Cheats his own nature and now generous grown, Dispenses realms and empires not his own." Charles V. granted a patent _to one of his Flemish favorites_, containing an exclusive right to import four thousand negroes!--_Hist. Slavery_. The crime of having _first_ recommended the importation of African slaves into America, _is due to the Flemish nobility_, who obtained a monopoly of four thousand negroes, which they sold to some Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats.--_Life of Cardinal Ximenes_. They (the Genoese) were the first to bring into a regular form, that commerce for slaves, between Africa and America, which has since grown to such an amazing extent.--_Robertson._ [19] "Too warmly generous and dearly true, The simple black," &c. It will remain an indelible reproach on the name of Europeans, that for more than three centuries their intercourse with the Africans has only tended to destroy their happiness and debase their character.--_Edin. Ency._ [20] "Now laughs the stranger at their anguished throes." The arts of the slave-merchant have inflamed the hostility of their various tribes, and heightened their ferocity by sedulously increasing their wars.--_Ibid._ [21] "By specious creeds and sophists darkly taught." Hamlet's advice to his offending mother;-- "Assume a virtue, tho' you have it not."