It is given to the people of this country and time, could they realise it, to make a new chapter of human experience. The past may suggest, but it can do little either in directing or deterring. There is nothing in the gloomy vaticinations of Tocqueville, wise and benevolent as he is, which should be permitted to darken our future. The mediæval antagonisms of races, when Christianity threw but a partial light over mankind, and before commerce had unfolded the harmony of interests among people of diverse origin or condition, determine no laws which will fetter the richer and more various development of modern life. Nor do the results of emancipation in the West Indies, more or less satisfactory as they may be, afford any measure of the progress which opens before our enfranchised masses. The insular and contracted life of the colonies, cramped also as they were by debt and absenteeism, has no parallel in the grand currents of thought and activity ever sweeping through the continent on which our problem is to be solved. In the light of these views, the attempt shall be made to report truthfully upon the freedmen at Port Royal. A word, however, as to the name. Civilization, in its career, may often be traced in the nomenclatures of successive periods. These people were first called contrabands at Fortress Monroe; but at Port Royal, where they were next introduced to us in any considerable number, they were generally referred to as freedmen. These terms are milestones in our progress; and they are yet to be lost in the better and more comprehensive designation of citizens, or, when discrimination is convenient, citizens of African descent. The enterprise for the protection and development of the freedmen at Port Royal has won its way to the regard of mankind. The best minds of Europe, as well as the best friends of the United States, like Cairnes and Gasparin, have testified much interest in its progress. An English periodical of considerable merit noticed at some length "Mr. Pierce's Ten Thousand Clients." In Parliament, Earl Russell noted it in its incipient stage, as a reason why England should not intervene in American affairs. The "Revue des Deux Mondes," in a recent number, characterizes the colony as "that small pacific army, far more important in the history of civilization than all the military expeditions despatched from time to time since the commencement of the civil war." * * * * * No little historical interest covers the region to which this account belongs. Explorations of the coast now known as that of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, involving the rival pretensions of Spain and France, were made in the first half of the sixteenth century. They were conducted by Ponce de Leon, Vasquez, Verrazani, and Soto, in search of the fountain of perpetual youth, or to extend empire by right of discovery. But no permanent settlement by way of colony or garrison was attempted until 1562.