As the reader peruses these characteristic anecdotes, he will ask himself how,--in the progress of mankind,--such a people is to be approached and dealt with? Will the Mahometanism of the North which is winning its way southward, and infusing itself among the crowds of central Africa, so as, in some degree, to modify their barbarism, prepare the primitive tribes to receive a civilization and faith which are as true as they are divine? Will our colonial fringe spread its fibres from the coast to the interior, and, like veins of refreshing blood, pour new currents into the mummy's heart? Is there hope for a nation which, in three thousand years, has hardly turned in its sleep? The identical types of race, servitude, occupation, and character that are now extant in Africa, may be found on the Egyptian monuments built forty centuries ago; while a Latin poem, attributed to Virgil, describes a menial negress who might unquestionably pass for a slave of our Southern plantations: "Interdum clamat Cybalen; erat unica custos; Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura; Torta comam, labroque tumens, et fusca colorem; Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo, Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodiga planta; Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant."[1] It will be seen from these hints that our memoir has nothing to do with slavery as a North American institution, except so far as it is an inheritance from the system it describes; yet, in proportion as the details exhibit an innate or acquired inferiority of the negro race _in its own land_, they must appeal to every generous heart in behalf of the benighted continent. It has lately become common to assert that Providence permits _an exodus through slavery_, in order that the liberated negro may in time return, and, with foreign acquirements, become the pioneer of African civilization. It is attempted to reconcile us to this "good from evil," by stopping inquiry with the "inscrutability of God's ways!" But we should not suffer ourselves to be deceived by such imaginary irreverence; for, in God's ways, there is nothing _less_ inscrutable than his _law of right_. That law is never qualified in this world. It moves with the irresistible certainty of organized nature, and, while it makes man free, in order that his responsibility may be unquestionable, it leaves mercy, even, for the judgment hereafter. Such a system of divine law can never palliate _the African slave trade_, and, in fact, it is the basis of that human legislation which converts the slaver into a pirate, and awards him a felon's doom.