Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/208

194 Park having travelled in company with a coffle of thirtyfive slaves, thus describes his feelings as they came near the coast: "Although I was now approaching the end of my tedious and toilsome journey, and expected in another day to meet with countrymen and friends, I could not part with my unfortunate fellow travellers,—doomed as I knew most of them to be, to a life of slavery in a foreign land,—without great emotion. During a peregrination of more than five hundred miles, exposed to the burning rays of a tropical sun, these poor slaves, amidst their own infinitely greater sufferings, would commiserate mine, and frequently, of their own accord, bring water to quench my thirst, and at night collect branches and leaves to prepare me a bed in the wilderness. We parted with mutual regret and blessings.—My good wishes and prayers were all I could bestow upon them, and it afforded me some consolation to be told that they were sensible I had no more to give."

The same enlightened traveller remarks, "All the negro nations that fell under my observation, though divided into a number of petty, independent states, subsist chiefly by the same means, live nearly in the same temperature, and possess a wonderful similarity of disposition. The Mandingoes, in particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful, inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity, which the reader must have observed to prevail in all classes, to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. No complete justification can be offered for this conduct, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it must be observed that they are not habitually and generally guilty of it towards each other. But before we pronounce them a more depraved people than any other, it were well to consider, whether the lower class of people in any part of Europe, would have acted, under similar circumstances, with greater honesty towards a stranger. It must be remembered that the laws of the country afforded me no protection; that every one was permitted to rob me with impunity; and that some part of my effects were of as great value in the estimation of the