extremely black and curly headed. At their marriages, it is a custom every where among them, says the same author, for all the guests to enjoy the bride, the first night, who bring accordingly suitable presents, by which means they commence their family capacity, or house-keeping. In one tribe, he found it a custom for the wives to make use of a certain mark, or sign on their limbs, to denote the number of times they had favored other gallants than the lawful one after marriage; the husband valuing them according to the number of these tokens, as they were the evidences of their wives' popular personal charms.
This is a dreadful picture of the negro race, in that one particular, and were it not for the restraints of the Christian religion, and the salutary laws enacted under its influence in America, and other countries in Christendom, they, as a people, if left to themselves, would be guilty of the same things as anciently, for their natures are ever the same.
Another tribe, of whom this Grecian author speaks, who lived in the same unrestrained manner, in Africa, assembled every three moons in a grand conclave, when all the children born during that term of time, were examined as to their looks, countenances, and shapes; and the men they most resembled were obliged to father and take care of them, there being no other way to ascertain the parents of their children. Herodotus, pages 170, 23.5, 236, 237.
It is intimated by Livy, vol. 1, book xxi, p. 369, that the Carthagenian generals were guilty of the practice of Sodomy, and that even Hannibal, who
