American Negro Slavery | Page 2

an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behind
three undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verde
southeastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees north
latitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator a
thousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight of
Biafra," the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteen
hundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern
desert begins. The country is commonly divided into Upper Guinea or
the Sudan, lying north and west of the great angle of the coast, and
Lower Guinea, the land of the Bantu, to the southward. Separate zones
may also be distinguished as having different systems of economy: in
the jungle belt along the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts
bordering this on the north and south the growing of millet and manioc
respectively, in small clearings, are the characteristic industries; while
beyond the edges of the continental forest cattle contribute much of the
food supply. The banana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their
swampy coastal plains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for
the transatlantic trade.
Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst.
The climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of
each year is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic
tornadoes play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring
occasional blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature
droops and is grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat
stimulates vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany

trees, and multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they
mosquitoes, elephants or boa constrictors. There would be abundant
food but for the superabundant creatures that struggle for it and prey
upon one another. For mankind life is at once easy and hard. Food of a
sort may often be had for the plucking, and raiment is needless; but
aside from the menace of the elements human life is endangered by
beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles and hippopotami in the
rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made a burden to all but
the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. In many districts
tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatal sleeping-sickness
among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionally destroy the
crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, short of metal,
which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarf brown ants
and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellings
continuously--except just after a village has been raided by the great
black ants which are appropriately known as "drivers." These drivers
march in solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food
resources to their fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a
rush. To stay among them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of
"Drivers!" will depopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at
one moment has been combing brown ants from his hair will in the
next find himself standing safely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay
until the drivers have taken their leave. Among less spectacular things,
mosquitoes fly in crowds and leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies
are always on hand, chigoes bore and breed under toe-nails,
hook-worms hang themselves to the walls of the intestines, and other
threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the flesh of the body.
Endurance through generations has given the people large immunity
from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from the
indigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course
from dysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet
robust health is fairly common, and where health prevails there is
generally happiness, for the negroes have that within their nature. They
could not thrive in Guinea without their temperament.
It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the west
coast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regions

successive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on
the Ogowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of
Guinea, and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating
and adapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to
dwell. The requirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where
nature supplies Turkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation.
But since undue physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to
parasites and hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of
mind, however, brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only
discourages but prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character,
and the