d they alone of all the races had one uniform religion; had
experienced together the persecutions by state and church which had
deprived them at home of their civil and religious liberties; and were
the common heirs to those principles of freedom and democracy which had
been developed in Scotland as nowhere else. At the time of the American
Revolution there were ... in all above five hundred settlements
scattered over practically all the American colonies."[10] Trained as
they were in the representative democracy of the Scottish kirk, thrown
on their own resources in the wilderness, mingling with the pioneers of
many other races, they took the lead in developing that Western type
which in politics and industry became ultimately the American type; yet
they retained their original character, and the American to-day is more
at home in Glasgow than in London.

CHAPTER III

THE NEGRO

Although the negro races of Africa extend across the continent and from
the Sudan to Cape Colony, yet the races which yielded the largest supply
of slaves for America were confined to a narrow stretch of the Atlantic
coast near the equator. For nearly two thousand miles from Cape Verde
the coast of Africa runs southeast and easterly, and then for another
thousand miles it runs to the south, forming the Gulf of Guinea, and
from a belt of land along this coast practically all the negro
immigrants to America have come. Here several large rivers, the Senegal,
the Gambia, the Niger, and the Congo--furnished harbors for slave ships
and routes for slave traders from the interior. Two circumstances, the
climate and the luxuriant vegetation, render this region hostile to
continuous exertion. The torrid heat and the excessive humidity weaken
the will and exterminate those who are too strenuous; but this same heat
and humidity, with the fertile soil, produce unparalleled crops of
bananas, yams, and grains. Thus nature conspires to produce a race
indolent, improvident, and contented. Seventy-five per cent of the
deaths are said to be executions for supposed witchcraft, which has
killed more men and women than the slave trade. Formerly cannibalism
prevailed, but it has now been largely stamped out by European
governments. The native governments are tribal, and the chiefs sustain
themselves by their physical prowess and the help of priests and
medicine men. Property is mainly in women and slaves, and inheritance is
through the female, except among