see these children of nature in sportive groups and infantine diversion. This happy infancy and gay youth is peculiarly calculated to organise a vigorous manhood, and a firm old age; and, I am persuaded, that these are the physical causes why the Negro race are so muscular in body, and procreative of their species. In some countries innoculation is practised; but the small pox is not so common, or dreadful in its effects, in these countries as in Europe. The greatest term of their lives may be computed at from sixty to seventy years, it seldom or ever happening that life is prolonged beyond that period in this part of Africa. They retain their vigour, and enjoy a permanent and regular state of health until the last; and I have observed a venerable chief of advanced years having the possession of a dozen of young handsome wives, and the father of a young progeny, whose legitimacy was never disputed or suspected. In Europe the last stage of man is a daily anticipation of dissolution; but in Africa, declining years are only insensible approaches to the termination of a journey, the event of which he considers as the end of life, unconscious of the future, but as a fatality equally attached to all the creation. The picture I have endeavoured to delineate may serve to convey an idea to the mind of the moral and physical state of Africa, which, undisturbed by ferocious barbarism, fierce hostilities, and horrid customs, convey a blissful and happy state of being; but, alas! we must now take another view, and contemplate these beings in the most degrading state, absorbed in superstitious idolatry, inhuman customs, and shut out from the civil arts of life, and the mild principles of Christianity. Their customs, their hostilities, slavery, and the mode I have conceived requisite to infranchise this unhappy race of men, I shall attempt to represent in the following chapter; and happy shall I feel if the description excites the attention and interference of more capacious minds on this subject, interesting to so large a portion of the human race, and to the claims of humanity. CHAPTER VII. _The Mode of Trial by_ Ordeal _and_ Red Water _in Africa.--The Wars of its Inhabitants.--The State of Barbarism and Slavery considered.--The Condition of the Africans will not be improved by a late Legislative Act, without further Interference.--Salutary Measures must be adopted towards the Negroes in the Colonies.--A System suggested to abolish Slavery in Africa, and the Slave Trade in general, and to enlarge the intellectual Powers of its Inhabitants.--The proper Positions to effect an Opening to the Interior of Africa, and to display to the World its manifold Resources._