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124, who would become utterly extinct, if their continual mortality were not to be supplied by repeated importations.

The melancholy which oppresses them on seeing themselves reduced to so hard a condition of slavery; the cruel treatment inflicted on them for the slightest causes; the insufficiency and unwholesome quality of their food; and the rigorous tasks from which the females themselves are not exempted, at the close of their pregnancy, and immediately after the birth; are so may principles destructive of their propagation.

If it has failed in a proportionate degree, the Africans who are free from these galling chains have not been deficient in reproduction; but it has been of a nature so prejudicial to the kingdom, as to have repeatedly called for the interference of the legislature. It consists of that mixture of the different casts, which, by the depuration of successive generations, acquires at the fourth a colour perfectly white; in the same way as we perceive, in the same number of filiations, but in an inverse progression, the transition from white to black.

The European emigrants embarked on board the fleets and galleons, were almost all of them buried in the sepulchre of the Spaniards; by which name Porto-Bello is known, on account of the morbid temperature of the air. In one instance, no less than six hundred of them perished in the space of a week; and such in general was the mortality which ensued, that it became necessary to discontinue the embarkations. Those who, to avoid these perils, proceeded to Peru, and those who have since been conveyed thither by the route of Cape Horn, either have been persons who, availing themselves of the means they possessed to acquire a fortune, have returned to spend it in their own country; or those who, discouraged at the