Page:Bible Defence of Slavery.djvu/214

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ORIGIN, CHARACTER, AND

place of his district or region of dwelling, was in the caves of certain mountains, called the Kong mountains, and adjacent to the river Niger, not a great distance from the Atlantic, which empties into that ocean at Liberia, in north lat. 6°. Vol. ii, p. 103.

Rollin says, that abominable lewdness, as stated by Trogus Pompeius, a Roman historian, was the great and predominant vice of all Africa. Vol. i, p. 375. On a subject like this, or any other, touching the character of the natives of Africa, the Romans had the most unbounded opportunity to know them in those ages, because they had a great empire in that country, which they wrested out of the hands of the Carthagenians, who had conquered the country some hundred years before, who were also a black people from Phœnicia, of whom we shall have something to remark hereafter.

The facts set forth in this section of the work, are, after all, but little items in the ocean of evidence that might be adduced, proving this people, the race of Ham, to be a people who, in all ages, have been more sensual and animal in their inclinations, than are the races of either the red or white man; which fact is an evidence of no small magnitude, of their real and universal mental inferiority.

This remark, we know, may be considered as severe, and yet we do not see how we can make any abatement, except to say that, happily, there have been, in all ages, individuals of the negro race, both as it relates to talent of the medium scale, and amiableness of character, who should be excepted from the great mass of the countless myriads of the