The Common And Characteristic Mark Of Their Superstition, Is The System Of Fetiches, By Which An Individual Appropriates To Himself Some Casual Object As Divine, And Which, With Respect To Himself, By This Process, Becomes Deified, And Exercises A Peculiar Fatality Over His Fortune.

The barbarism of Africa, may be attributed in part its great fertility, which enables its inhabitants to live without are but chiefly to its imperviousness to strangers.

Every petty state is so surrounded with natural barriers, that it is isolated from the rest, and though it may be overrun and wasted, and part of its inhabitants carried into captivity, it has never been made to form a constituent part of one large consolidated empire and thus smaller states become dependent, without being incorporated. The whole region is still more inaccessible on a grand scale, than the petty states are in miniature; and while the rest of the earth has become common, from the frequency of visitors, Africa still retains part of the mystery, which hung over the primitive and untrodden world.

Passing over the attempts of the very early travellers to become acquainted with the geographical portion of Africa, in which much fiction, and little truth, were blended, we arrive at that period, when the spirit of discovery began to manifest itself amongst some of the European states. The darkness and lethargy, which characterised the middle ages, had cast their baneful influence over every project, which had discovery for its aim, and even the invaluable discovery of the mariner's compass, which took place at the commencement of the thirteenth century, and which opened to man the dominion of the sea, and put him in full possession of the earth had little immediate effect in emboldening navigators to venture into unfrequented seas. At a somewhat earlier period, it is true, the Hanse Towns and the Italian republics began to cultivate manufactures and commerce, and to lay the foundation of a still higher prosperity, but they carried on chiefly an inland or coasting trade. The naval efforts, even of Venice or Genoa, had no further aim than to bring from Alexandria, and the shores of the Black Sea, the commodities of India, which had been conveyed thither chiefly by caravans over land. Satisfied with the wealth and power, to which they had been raised by this local and limited commerce, these celebrated republics made an attempt to open a more extended path over the ocean. Their pilots, indeed, guided most of the vessels engaged in the early voyages of discovery, but they were employed, and the means furnished, by the great monarchs, whose ports were situated upon the shores of the Atlantic.

The first appearance of a bolder spirit, in which the human mind began to make a grand movement in every direction, in religion, science, freedom, and liberty, may be dated from about the end of the fifteenth century. The glory of leading the way in this new career, was reserved for Portugal, then one of the smallest, and least powerful of the European kingdoms.

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