Many Places Are Likewise Unfavourable To Population, From Being
Unhealthful.
The swampy banks of the Gambia, the Senegal, and other
rivers towards the coast, are of this description.
Perhaps it is on this
account chiefly that the interior countries abound more with inhabitants,
than the maritime districts, for all the Negro nations that fell under my
observation, though divided into a number of petty independent states,
subsist chiefly by the same means, live nearly in the same temperature,
and possess a wonderful similarity of disposition. The Mandingoes, in
particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful in their dispositions,
inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most
prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity,
which the reader must have observed to prevail in all classes, of them,
to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. For this part of
their conduct, no complete justification can be offered, because theft is
a crime in their own estimation; and it must be observed, that they are
not habitually and generally guilty of it towards each other. This,
however, is an important circumstance in mitigation; and before we
pronounce them a more depraved people than any other, it were well to
consider whether the lower order of people in any part of Europe would
have acted, under similar circumstances, with greater honesty towards a
stranger, than the Negroes acted towards me. It must not be forgotten,
that the laws of the country afforded me no protection; that every one
was at liberty to rob me with impunity; and, finally, that some part of
my effects were of as great value, in the estimation of the Negroes, as
pearls and diamonds would have been in the eyes of a European. Let us
suppose a black merchant of Hindostan to have found his way into the
centre of England, with a box of jewels at his back; and that the laws of
the kingdom afforded him no security, in such a case, the wonder would
be, not that the stranger was robbed of any part of his riches, but that
any part was left for a second depredator. Such, on sober reflection, is
the judgment I have formed concerning the pilfering disposition of the
Mandingo Negroes towards myself. Notwithstanding I was so great a
sufferer by it, I do not consider that their natural sense of justice was
perverted or extinguished; it was overpowered only for the moment, by the
strength of a temptation which it required no common virtue to resist.
On the other hand, as some counterbalance to this depravity in their
nature, allowing it to be such, it is impossible for me to forget the
disinterested charity, and tender solicitude, with which many of these
poor heathens (from the sovereign of Sego to the poor women who received
me at different times into their cottages, when I was perishing of
hunger) sympathised with me in my sufferings, relieved my distresses, and
contributed to my safety. This acknowledgment, however, is perhaps more
particularly due to the female part of the nation.
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