ervable among the inhabitants; they are all negroes,
but in different social conditions, more or less liable to injury from
the presence of the slaver, and yielding different temperaments and
qualities to colonial life. The beautiful and fertile amphitheatre
called Whidah, in North latitude 6 deg., with Dahomey just behind it, is
populous with a superior race. Where did it come from? The area which
it occupies has only about fifty miles of coast and less than thirty of
interior; its people are as industrious and thrifty as any on the face
of the earth. They never raised sugar and indigo with enthusiasm, but at
home their activity would have interpreted to Mr. Carlyle a soul
above pumpkins. They cultivated every square foot of ground up to
the threshold of their dwellings; the sides of ditches, hedges, and
inclosures were planted with melons and vegetables, and the roads
between the villages shrank to foot-paths in the effort to save land for
planting. On the day when a crop was harvested, another was sown.

Their little State was divided into twenty-six provinces or counties,
ruled by hereditary lords. The King was simply the most important one
of these. Here were institutions which would have deserved the epithet
_patriarchal_, save for the absence of overseers and the auction-block.
The men worked in the field, the women spun at home. Two markets were
held every four days in two convenient places, which were frequented by
five or six thousand traders. Every article for sale had its appropriate
place, and the traffic was conducted without tumult or fraud. A judge
and four inspectors went up and down to hear and settle grievances.
The women had their stalls, at which they sold articles of their own
manufacture from cotton or wood, plates, wooden cups, red and blue
paper, salt, cardamom-seeds, palm-oil, and calabashes.

How did it happen that such a thrifty little kingdom learned the
shiftlessness of slave-trading? Early navigators discovered that they
had one passion, that of gaming. This was sedulously cultivated by the
French and Portuguese who had colonies at stake. A Whidah man, after
losing all his money and merchandise, would play for his wife and
children, and finally for himself. A slave-trader was always ready to
purchase him and his interesting family from the successful gamester,
who, in turn, often took passage in the same vessel. In this way Whidah
learned to procure slaves for itself, who could be gambled