chose the calabash, which contained gold, iron, and all the choice products of the earth; in consequence of which the negro race to this day possess these blessings in abundance: while the sealed paper falling to the share of the whites, has conferred on them a higher gift of knowledge, wherewith the contents of the calabash may be turned to account. This admission of the superiority of the whites on the part of the Ashantees appears also in their belief that the good negroes become white in the future state. No part of Africa, or even of the world, is believed to be richer in gold than Ashantee.
The kingdom of Dahomey, situated eastward from Ashantee, resembles it in the general aspect of the soil, and in many other particulars. It appears to be a recent negro state, formed by the conquest of a number of tribes by a powerful race from the interior. The government of the Dahomans, like that of the Ashantees, is an absolute monarchy; but the Dahoman king seems to be still more despotic in practice than his Ashantee neighbor. When, in obedience to some superstitious freak, he wishes to send a message to some of his deceased relatives in the other world, he delivers the message to some attendant negro, whose head is immediately cut off, as a means of forwarding him to his destination; and if the monarch has forgot any part of his communication, he immediately adds a postscript by a second messenger. The bloody custom of sacrificing a number of victims on the occasion of a great man's funeral is practiced at Dahomey as well as Ashantee. The Dahomans have similar religious beliefs with the Ashantees: their principal object of worship, appropriately enough, is the tiger. Of late years some improvement is said to have taken place in the habits of this fierce African race.
Passing from Upper Guinea, of which Ashantee and Dahomey are the principal territories, we come next to Lower or South Guinea, which extends from the Bight of Benin to the commencement of Southern Africa, and includes the provinces or districts of Loango, Congo, Angola and Benguela. The whole of this tract of coast presents the aspect of a country degraded and deteriorated by intercourse with Europeans, to a condition worse than its original negro barbarism. Here, more than three centuries ago, the Portuguese established themselves partly as missionaries of Christianity, and partly as traders in slaves; and while their efforts in the former capacity, directed as they are by the most absurd and wretched bigotry, produced almost no beneficial effect, the curse of the slave traffic which they imported has adhered to the country with a tenacity which all the rigors of modern philanthropy cannot overcome. It is from these coasts that the exportation of negroes is said to go on at the present time more busily than it did before the abolition of the slave trade. The characteristics of the coast, and of the population which inhabit it, are determined by the brutal traffic of which it is the scene. It is impossible, within our limits, to give a description of the whole line of shore, of the small port-towns scattered along it, with their motley population of negroes, mulattoes, and slave-dealing Portuguese; or of the negro districts in the interior, where the natives fight and kidnap each other to supply the demand for slaves on the coast.
