Having now finished my narrative, it remains for me to fulfil my obligations to the reader and the public, by briefly stating the result of my experience, not only upon the habits and manners of the people of Western Africa, but also as to the progress they have made towards civilization, as to their political institutions and religious improvement. In doing this I shall cautiously abstain from entering into abstruse calculations, and religiously confine myself to what my best judgement enables me to declare from practical observation. I must here however state, that it has been too long the custom to set little value on the African Negro, to consider him as a being mid-way placed between the mere brute and man; as impervious to every ray of intellectual light; and, in a word, as incapable of enjoying the blessings of civil or religious liberty. This custom is, to say the least of it, erroneous, and the notion on which it is founded unjust. The Spaniards, after the discovery of South America, affected to believe the South Americans of a species inferior to themselves. They ruinously acted on that belief for centuries, and the descendants of those Spaniards have lived to see the day, when long observation has taught them, at a large expense, a very different lesson. It is not however denied, that slaves must and will be slaves, with all the cunning and treachery which their condition engenders, and perhaps it may still be a question, if persons enfranchised from a state of slavery can, by the fact of such an enfranchisement, become at once, or even very speedily, fit and useful members of a free and enlightened community. At the first blush of the question the answer would be in the negative, but that negative should not be left unqualified. The people amongst whom I have travelled, and of whom only I would now be understood to write, are illiterate and consequently superstitious; but the former arises not from want of capacity or genius so much as from the want of means to cultivate them; their mechanical like their agricultural knowledge is extremely limited, but why from that argue their incapacity to meet improvement, if improvement were happily thrown in their way? They have beside, a civil polity and a diplomatic chicane in their intercourse with each other, which is not usually to be found in merely savage life. Like most half taught people their cunning generally supersedes their wisdom, but then I am still prepared to argue, that if you allow them the full exercise of their industry; if you improve and protect it; if, by wise and judicious policy, you lift the Negro in his own esteem, and teach his Chief, that what is good was intended for all, though not in the same proportion, for the servant as the master; if you abate their superstition by the careful introduction of evangelical truths; if, in a word, you realize those things, the condition of Africa will soon assume the appearance of health, longevity, and happiness.