“The main body of the population is living free in the interior, under their own chiefs and laws, cultivating their own farms, catching fish in their own rivers, or fighting bravely with the grand old denizens of the forest, which, in more recent continents, can only be reached in rocky strata or under perennial ice. Winwood Reade hit the truth when he said the ancient Egyptian, with his large, round, black eyes, full, luscious lips, and somewhat depressed nose, is far nearer the typical negro than the west coast African, who has been debased by the unhealthy land he lives in. The slaves generally, and especially those on the west coast, at Zanzibar and elsewhere are extremely ugly. I have no prejudice against their color; indeed, any one who lives long among them forgets they are black and feels they are just fellow-men; but the low, retreating forehead, prognathous jaws, lark-heels and other physical peculiarities common among slaves and West African negroes, always awaken some feelings of aversion akin to those with which we view specimens of the Bill Sykes and ‘Bruiser’ class in England. I would not utter a syllable calculated to press down either class more deeply in the mire in which it is already sunk, but I wish to point out that these are not typical Africans any more than typical Englishmen, and that the natives on nearly all the high lands of the interior Continent are, as a rule, fair average specimens of humanity. “I happened to be present when all the head men of the great Chief Msama--who lives west of the south end of Tanganyika--had come together to make peace with certain Arabs who had burned their chief town, and I am certain one could not see more finely formed, intellectual heads in any assembly in London or Paris, and the faces and forms corresponded finely with the well-shaped heads. Msama himself had been a sort of Napoleon for fighting and conquering in his younger days. He was exactly like the Ancient Assyrians sculptured on the Nineveh marbles, as Nimrod and others, and he showed himself to be one of ourselves by habitually indulging in copious potations of beer, called pombe, and had become what Nathaniel Hawthorne called ‘bulbous below the ribs.’ I do not know where the phrase ‘bloated aristocracy’ arose. It must be American, for I have had glimpses of a good many English noblemen, and Msama was the only specimen of a ‘bloated aristocrat’ on whom I ever set eyes.