Among The Men, As The Reader Must Have Seen, My Reception, Though Generally Kind, Was Sometimes Otherwise.

It varied according to the various tempers of those to whom I made application.

The hardness of avarice in some, and the blindness of bigotry in others, had closed up the avenues to compassion; but I do not recollect a single instance of hard-heartedness towards me in the women. In all my wanderings and wretchedness I found them uniformly kind and compassionate; and I can truly say, as my predecessor Mr. Ledyard has eloquently said before me, "To a woman, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. If I was hungry or thirsty, wet or sick, they did not hesitate, like the men, to perform a generous action. In so free and so kind a manner did they contribute to my relief, that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught, and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with a double relish."

It is surely reasonable to suppose, that the soft and amiable sympathy of nature, which was thus spontaneously manifested towards me, in my distress, is displayed by these poor people as occasion requires, much more strongly towards persons of their own nation and neighbourhood, and especially when the objects of their compassion are endeared to them by the ties of consanguinity. Accordingly, the maternal affection (neither suppressed by the restraints, nor diverted by the solicitudes of civilized life) is every where conspicuous among them; and creates a correspondent return of tenderness in the child. An illustration of this has been given in p. 39. "Strike me," said my attendant, "but do not curse my mother." The same sentiment I found universally to prevail, and observed in all parts of Africa, that the greatest affront which could be offered to a Negro, was to reflect on her who gave him birth.

It is not strange, that this sense of filial duty and affection among the Negroes should be less ardent towards the father than the mother. The system of polygamy, while it weakens the father's attachment, by dividing it among the children of different wives, concentrates all the mother's jealous tenderness to one point, the protection of her own offspring. I perceived with great satisfaction, too, that the maternal solicitude extended not only to the growth and security of the person, but also, in a certain degree, to the improvement of the mind of the infant; for one of the first lessons in which the Mandingo women instruct their children, is _the practice of truth_. The reader will probably recollect the case of the unhappy mother, whose son was murdered by the Moorish banditti, at Funingkedy, p. 86. - Her only consolation, in her uttermost distress, was the reflection that the poor boy, in the course of his blameless life, _had never told a lie_. Such testimony, from a fond mother on such an occasion, must have operated powerfully on the youthful part of the surrounding spectators.

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