Page:The future of Africa.djvu/317

Rh and the sword have been her distressful ravaging visitations. War, with devastating stride, has ravaged her fair fields, and peopled her open and voracious tombs. The slave trade—that fell destroyer! has fired the hamlets of her children—has sacked her cities—has turned the hands of her sons upon each other—and set her different communities at murderous strife, and colored their hands with fraternal blood! Yea, every thing natural has been changed into the monstrous; and all things harmonious turned into discord and confusion. Earth has had her beauty marred by the bloody track of the cruel men who have robbed my father-land of her children: and the choral voice of ocean, which should lift up naught but everlasting symphonies in the ears of angels and of God, has been made harsh and dissonant, by the shrieks and moans and agonizing cries of the poor victims, who have either chosen a watery grave in preference to slavery, or else have been east into its depths, the sick and the emaciated, by the ruthless slave-dealer! And then, when landed on the distant strand—the home of servitude, the seat of oppression—then has commenced a system of overwork and physical endurance, incessant and unrequited—a series of painful tasks, of forced labor, of want and deprivation, and lashings, and premature deaths, continued from generation to generation, transmitted as the only inheritance of poor, helpless humanity, to children's children! But now there is a new spirit abroad—not only in the Christian world, but likewise through the different quarters of her own broad continent. There