and the Romans can be seen in their mixed blood and the foreign control to which they are subjected. The history of the Cushites, in its African section, has been entirely different, Shut in by the great desert from the rest of the world, and, until the discovery of America, protected from foreign aggression by the then, to them, mysterious ocean, they have peopled the vast interior of the African continent with numerous tribes and nations; of most of whom we have but vague, indefinite, and almost fabulous reports, and concerning whom the world is now in nearly as much doubt and incertitude, as it was two thousand years ago, in the time of Herodotus and Ptolemy.
This ignorance, with respect to the Cushite or Negro family, long continued as it was, has in more modern days become greatly lessened. It was broken up by that remarkable activity of the human intellect which the discovery of the magnet, the invention of printing, and the geographical adventures of Columbus, produced in the fifteenth century. These events led to a complete acquaintance with the coast of Africa, and the tribes dwelling thereon. Another influence tended to the same result: the peculiar social condition of the newly-discovered islands in the West—a condition produced by the ruthless waste of aboriginal life by Spain—caused a strong demand for a new supply of labor. In this originated the Slave Trade: and this effectually broke the spell of African seclusion. The demand for West Indian labor was met by the forcible substitution of the Negro for the Indian.
