his temperate and
laborious habits, a certain enterprise and self-subsistence, a cleanly,
regular, and polished way, perhaps keeping his master's accounts, or
those of his own private ventures, in Arabic, and mindful of his future,
he was found to be a Mandingo. Their States are on the Senegal; Arabic
is not their language, but they are zealous Mohammedans, and have
schools in which the children learn the Koran. The men are merchants and
agriculturists; they control the trade over a great extent of country,
and the religion also, for the Koran is among the wares they carry, and
they impose at once the whole form of their social condition. These
Northern African nations have been subjected to Arab and Moorish
influence, and they make it plain that great movements have taken place
in regions which are generally supposed to be sunk in savage quiescence.
The Mandingoes, notwithstanding a shade of yellow in the complexion,
are still negroes, that is, they are an aboriginal people, improved by
contact with Islamism, and capable of self-development afterwards; but
the Moors never ruled them, nor mingled with their blood. Their features
are African, in the popular sense of that word, without one Semitic
trace. Awakened intelligence beams through frank and pleasing
countenances, and lifts, without effacing, the primitive type.
Undoubtedly, their ancestors sprang into being on sites where an
improved posterity reside. But what a history lies between the Fetichism
which is the mental form of African religious sentiment, and the worship
of one God without image or symbol!

In the administration of justice, some classes of their criminals are
sold into slavery, and occasionally a Mandingo would be kidnapped. But
there are many Mandingoes who are still pagans, and know nothing of
Arabic or commerce, yet who have the excellences of the dominant tribes:
these were found in the gangs of the slave-merchant.

So were the Jolofs, handsome, black as jet, with features more regular
than the Mandingoes, almost European, excepting the lips: a nonchalant
air, very warlike upon occasion, but not disposed to labor. They have
magistrates, and some forms for the administration of justice, but a
civilization less developed than the Mandingo, in consequence of early
contact with Christians. It is said that the slave-traders taught them
to lie and steal, and to sell each other, whenever they could not
supply a sufficient number of their neighbors, t