character.--BREWSTER _on Africa._

[15] "The merry numbers of his crisp-haired crew."

The negro race is, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human
species. Their infancy and youth are singularly happy. The parents are
passionately fond of their children.--GOLDBURY'S _Travels._

"Strike me," said my attendant, "but do not curse my mother." The same
sentiment I found universally to prevail.

Some of the first lessons in which the Mandings women instruct their
children is the _practice of truth_. It was the only consolation for a
negro mother, whose son had been murdered by the Moors, that "_the boy
had never told a lie_."--PARK'S _Travels._

[16] "With all the father sees each form retire,
A ruthless heathen, but a loving sire."

"Or led the combat, bold without a plan,
An artless savage, but a fearless man."
CAMPBELL.

[17] "Till lured by wealth the hardy Portuguese,
Sought the green waters of his Eastern seas,
And venturous nations more excursive grown,
Pierced his glad coast from radiant zone to zone."

Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, was the first to discover a
maritime passage to the Indies; unless, perhaps, we credit the
improbable achievement of the Phoenicians, related by Herodotus as
occurring, 604 B.C.

De Gama doubled the cape in 1498, explored the eastern shores as far
as Melinda, in Zanguebar, and sailing thence arrived at Calcutta in
May. This expedition, second to none in its results, save that of
Columbus six years before, drew the attention of all Europe. Whole
nations became actuated by the same enthusiasm, and private companies
of merchants sent out whole fleets on voyages of discovery, scouring
the entire coast from Cape Verd to Gaudfui, and discovering the
Mascharenhas and most of the islands of the Ethiopean Archipelago.

[18] "Cheats his own nature and now generous grown,
Dispenses realms and empires not his own."

Charles V. granted a patent _to one of his Flemish favorites_,
containing an exclusive right to import four thousand negroes!--_Hist.
Slavery_.

The crime of having _first_ recommended the importation of African
slaves into America, _is due to the Flemish nobility_, who obtained a
monopoly of four thousand negroes, which they sold to some Genoese
merchants for 25,000 ducats.--_Life of Cardinal Ximenes_.

They (the Genoese) were the first to bring into a regular