He is quite aware that all these horrors are perpetrated that a European market may be supplied. He knows also what has preceded the slave path, and yet, incredible as it may seem, not one indignant protest is drawn from him, not one appeal to Christian Europe, not even a word of commendation of the work already inaugurated for its suppression. Quite the opposite, in fact, on which point let Park speak for himself. “How far it (slavery) is maintained and supported by the slave traffic, which for two hundred years the nations of Europe have carried on with the natives of the coast, it is neither within my province nor in my power to explain. If my sentiments should be required concerning the effect which a discontinuance of that commerce would produce on the manners of the natives, I should have no hesitation in observing that in the present unenlightened state of their minds my opinion is, the effect would neither be so extensive or beneficial as many wise and worthy persons fondly expect.” The wonder of the thing is intensified, to our mind, when we reflect on the deep religious nature of Park, his genuine kind-heartedness, his noble ambitions, and his appreciation of all that is sweet in human nature. The story is pregnant with meaning as to the influence of our environment in opening or shutting our eyes to what is going on around us. But while Britain was then awakening to a sense of its guilt, and preparing to purge itself of the unholy traffic, we find from Park’s notes that a new trade, destined to have almost as terrible consequences, was already established. Europe, he tells us, took from the Gambia chiefly slaves, and gave in return spirits and ammunition. For over two hundred years the unfortunate natives of Africa had been treated as wild creatures, the lawful prey and spoil of the higher races. The mother was tempted to sell her child, and the chief his subjects. Village fought against village, and tribe against tribe, that American plantations might be tilled. As wild beasts and things accursed the negroes were shot down in myriads, in myriads they perished on the road, in myriads were transported to a life of shame and misery. And now, when a new order of things was about to be instituted, there had commenced another hundred years of disgraceful commerce to complete the work of brutalising the West Coast negro, of blighting all elevating impulses, and suppressing all habits of industry, transforming him into what he is to-day--the most villainous, treacherous, and vicious being to be found in all Africa.