kind, and according to Dr. Lugenbeel, it has a pleasant climate, and one which is healthy to the African race. Its waters, too, afford an abundance of fish. In a word, it contains the elements of comfort and wealth in boundless profusion.
Excepting a small proportion of Arabs, who crossed the Great Desert during the middle ages and settled among them, this region is inhabited by the pure negro race. This race, although very degraded, probably possesses much higher capabilities than are usually ascribed to it. It is, perhaps, injudicious in the friends of the negro, to contend for an intellectual equality between the white and black races. Diversities in this particular are common over the whole earth among nations of the same race, as well as among those of different races. No doubt the Africans are nearly equal to the Chinese, and superior to some branches of the races considered superior to theirs, as for example the twenty-five millions of Russian serfs. But the mind of man is modified by circumstances, as well as his body. And the intellect of the negro has suffered from the protracted disadvantages under which he has laboured. No one, however, can assign any limit to the improvement which may be effected under suitable culture; and there can be no reasonable doubt that the negro has abundant capacity for all the ordinary affairs of human life, including self-government, and may attain to as high a degree of civilization as any other race. There are indeed some features in the negro character of peculiar interest, Of all
