one we have noticed is in its impelling force. He allows none of his soldiers to desert his post, he must conquer or die.

Last year the soldiers of this tyrant invaded the Bechuana country; and the unwarlike Bechuanas fell before them like sheep under the knife of the butcher. The whole of the Bechuana has been desolated as far as Lattakoo, which is yet untouched; and the people of Mosalekatsi possess the country. When I arrived at Lattakoo on my late journey, I found the people, subjects of Mahuri, and the remains of the Barolongs and the Baharutsi, who had escaped the slaughter of Mosalekatsi's bands, in the most distressing situation. The remains of the destroyed tribes were suffering by famine, and the whole of the people were (to use their own expression) "like dead men," from an apprehension that they might be visited by Mosalekatsi and destroyed the next hour, as the other Bechuana tribes had been. I had intended to visit Mosalekatsi: but although I had no apprehension as to my own personal safety, I could not be sure that my journey would protect the helpless thousands around me, who were looking to me for assistance, as if I had had an army at my command. After consulting with the chiefs and the French missionaries, who had retreated to this place on the approach of Mosalekatsi, I returned to Griqua Town, accompanied by Mr. Lemue, and followed by the chief Mahuri, to consult with Waterboer, the chief of Griqua Town, about the means of preserving what remained of this people. The plan formed was, that they should all fall back to the number of perhaps 20,000, on the territory of Waterboer, that he might be able to throw his shield over them, should they be attacked by Mosalekatsi.

If any one is disposed to ask--What has Christianity done for Europe? or what will it do for the native tribes of Africa? we refer such an inquirer to the spectacle now before us. Before the Griquas embraced Christianity, they were as helpless as the Bechuanas; and such is the difference now between the Griquas and the Bechuanas, that we see perhaps 30,000 Bechuanas looking up to the Christian chief of Griqua Town, who cannot perhaps muster more than 200 horsemen, as their sole dependence and their only safeguard against the overwhelming and ferocious band of Mosalekatsi.

It is an interesting fact, that not only are the Korannas and Caffers and Bechuanas in the country around the Colony desirous of having missionaries Iwith them, but even Dingaan and Mosalekatsi unite in expressing the same desire; and we have not the slightest reason to suspect that missionaries would be less safe with them than among the other more peaceable tribes around us.

The Societies now in operation in South Africa, cannot do any thing efficiently for these two powerful Chiefs and their people. And on this ground should the churches of America think of assisting us in South Africa, I would strongly recommend that they should send a mission to them. The country occupied by Dingaan, which stretches from the neighbourhood of De la Goa Bay to Port Natal, presents a noble field for missionary labour, and in many respects deserving the preference to any other field of labour connected with the southern portion of the African continent. From the fertility of the land, and the contiguity of Port Natal and De la Goa Bay, the labours of efficient missionaries in that country might in course of time give rise to a civilized community, which might be of the greatest importance to the eastern shores of this continent. Some years ago some adventurers from the eastern part of the colony, visited Port Natal with a view to establish themselves there. With this view they obtained permission from Dingaan to locate themselves there; but the settlement has not yet obtained the sanction of the British Government; and as it has been hitherto conducted, it is more likely to deteriorate than to improve the natives. The greatest difficulty which missionaries would in all probability have to encounter, would be from the vices of that settlement. Those difficulties do not, however, present a sufficient barrier to discourage your missionaries from engaging

in this undertaking. American ships sometimes touch at Port Natal; and any ship passing to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope might easily land them there. Whatever views the few English at that place might entertain of the object of the missionaries, they would not offer them any violence; and if they could not do them any good, they might pass on from them to the chief, who would at once receive them. Dingaan is acquainted with the power and character of the American nation. Not long since an American captain made him a present of an article and he sent it to the English settlers, asking them if the English could make him as handsome a present. There is now a communication by land between this colony and Port Natal, but should any of your churches think of sending missionaries there, I would recommend in preference that they should go immediately there by water. If you resolve upon a mission to that country, the sooner it is undertaken the better.

To give you any estimate of the population of this country I find very difficult. The Colony of the Cape of Good Hope is very thinly peopled. A great part of it is covered with mountains and barren plains; but the taste of the people for grazing farms has contributed more than any other disadvantage it labours under, to keep the people at a distance from each other. And so long as they are allowed to spread themselves, taking possession of the territories beyond them, when more grazing farms are required for their children, this evil will not soon be remedied. This system has been attended with the most baneful effects to the natives. Deprived of their country and of the means of subsistence by the encroaching spirit of the colonists, offences on their part were unavoidable, and those offences have been too frequently followed by extermination; and now immediately beyond the borders of our colony little remains but what our missions have preserved. The Commando System pursued on our frontiers is perhaps the worst system imaginable, and must while it is persisted in, render the countries around our colony deserts. This great abuse is one of the evils I hope to see remedied by our Reformed Parliament.

Those parts of eastern Africa nearest the coast are the most fruitful, and the most thickly peopled. Our European colonies have a fatal influence on the population in their immediate neighbourhood. This is in a great measure where the people are not saved by the labour of the missionaries, the inevitable consequence of the introduction of brandy, guns, and gunpowder among them. In my late journey into the interior I was made acquainted with the names of several traders, who are in the habit of carrying these articles to the native tribes, and of exchanging them for the cattle they had sent them out to steal from the more defenceless tribes farther in the interior. The Government declares those articles to be contraband; but as no means have hitherto been employed to make examples of the offenders, the law is a dead letter. This is another evil, which it is to be hoped will be cured by our Reformed Parliament. I need scarcely mention the slave trade as another cause of the thinness of the population. Mosalekatsi has never himself traded in slaves, but the constant wars in which he has been engaged with the slave-traders on the coast may account for the ferocity of his people, and their superiority in war over the tribes they have lately subdued. The country of the Zoolahs is the most thickly peopled of any of the countries with which we are acquainted in South Africa.

The Bechuanas have of late years suffered more from famine than from any other cause. Being wholly dependent upon their cattle, when they have been robbed of them they have no alternative but to rob others, or die of hunger, and many of them die in this way.-One of the chief arguments we have heard urged in defence of polygamy has been, that it is favourable to population. Yet such is the fact, that the increase in Africa is much greater where the law allows one wife only, than it is where polygamy obtains. The prevalence of polygamy and the number of children that die in infancy from neglect and want of proper nourishment, must be allowed to have a considerable share in

the scantiness of the population in many of the districts on this continent. If Commodore Owen's opinion is correct, (and no man had ever better opportunities or was better qualified for forming an opinion on the subject,) that there are 80,000 slaves transported every year from the eastern and western coasts of Africa, and that 4 or 5 perish for every individual that is shipped on board the slave vessels, the loss of human beings to Africa by that infernal traffic, must be sensibly felt in keeping the population, particularly in those parts of the continent where it is most actively carried on, at a low standard. But those that are killed and captured by this traffic, are nothing in comparison of those barriers that are thrown in the way of the increase of the population, by the state of society which it occasions over the whole continent, and the numbers that perish by the famines it occasions. There is no part of this continent free from the baneful effects of this traffic. It penetrates from shore to shore to the very centre of Africa, dashing to pieces every fragment of society, before those fragments can have time to unite into any thing like a regular government. Most of the famines which sweep off so many of the inhabitants of Africa arise from this cause. People will never cultivate the ground to great advantage, where they have little chance of reaping a harvest. And as the slave-traders seize the cattle as well as the people of the tribes they conquer, the desolation occasioned by the capture of the former must be greater than that which arises from the latter. For one who may perish immediately in those conflicts to which the slave-trade gives rise, many perish by the attempts of the plundered tribes to supply themselves with cattle for those they have lost, and that indifference to human life and that state of universal disorder, which it is the tendency of the system to generate.

In discussing the merits of Africa as a missionary field, we must before quitting this subject say something respecting the other parts of this continent on which you ask my opinion.

I say nothing of the advantages America may gain from the new colony of Liberia, or of the advantages the people of colour may gain from becoming citizens of this new country. I leave such questions to be settled by the citizens of the United States, who are by their local knowledge better qualified than I am to decide them. But so far as our plans for the future improvement of Africa are concerned, I regard this settlement as full of promise to this unhappy continent. Half a dozen such colonies, conducted on christian principles, might be the means under the divine blessing, of regenerating this degraded quarter of the globe. Every prospective measure for the improvement of Africa must have in it the seminal principles of good government; and no better plan can be devised for laying the foundations of Christian governments than that which this new settlement presents. Properly conducted your new colony may become an extensive empire, which may be the means of shedding the blessings of civilization and peace over a vast portion of this divided and distracted continent. From some hints I have seen in some of the English papers, I perceive that you will have some difficulties to encounter in the prosecution of your present plan. It is the fate of every good plan for the melioration of the human race to be opposed, particularly at its commencement; and the virulence of the opposition is generally in proportion to the excellence of the plan proposed. But we have this to encourage us in our endeavours to persevere in the pursuit of a good object that it must in the end triumph. I cannot for a moment suppose that ever America will force the poor people of colour to go to Liberia. Such a mode of proceeding would neither accord with the liberties or good sense of your countrymen. And if every slave proprietor in the United States offer to make his slaves free, and the slaves are willing to accept their freedom on the condition that they will exchange America for Liberia, I can see nothing in such an arrangement to excite or nourish a spirit of hostility against your new settlement. Care should be taken, however, that the slaves

liberated on this principle should not be the worst slaves on an establishment, or slaves of bad character. If your new settlement should ever come to be crowded with persons of such a description, disorder, despotism, and ruin must follow, or at least must be in danger of following. As I do not see any American publications at the Cape of Good Hope, and as all the information I have of what is doing on your side of the water, is from the scanty notices of American affairs I can glean from the English papers, what I say on this subject is to be understood as spoken under correction. But with the information I have I would suggest, whether it would not be well to give the whole of the undertaking a religious character, and to invite the religious and benevolent portion of the black people to unite in it for the purpose of evangelizing and civilizing Africa. If your new settlement is to be so conducted as to answer the expectations to which it has given rise, the Committee or Board which may have the management of its affairs must keep in operation an efficient gospel ministry, and an efficient system of education. The natives immediately around the new settlement should be at once supplied with missionaries. Missionary stations should be formed at convenient distances from each other, so as to admit of a communication between them. And with a faithful and able missionary at each station you should have schoolmasters and mechanics, with all the apparatus necessary for the attainment of the object you propose. In this way you may evangelize and civilize one circle after another, till you have brought a vast portion of the African continent within the pale of the Christian church and the civilized world. This is what we are doing in South Africa, and would soon be able to do to a great extent, were not the generality of our white people more partial to the old system of seizing the country and then the property of the people, and then the people themselves for their own use, than they are to any plan which has for its object the destruction of caste, and the elevation of the aborigines of the country to an equal participation with themselves. in the blessings of liberty and civilization.

I have read with attention the travels of Captain Clapperton and the journals of the Landers. They have made an important discovery, and it is upon that discovery that their friends must be content to rest their claims to public gratitude. It would be unjust and cruel to decide their merits by the composition of their journals. They did not go to Africa to write books, but to discover the Niger, and in that they have succeeded. Allowing them then that high merit to which they are entitled, I shall not be blamed for undue severity, if I find fault with some of their sentiments. They were evidently very deficient in the talents necessary to enable them to give a correct view of the state of society in those places they visited. One feels grieved at the charges of idleness, &c. &c. which they bring against a people who have not, according to their own account, a single motive to industry, beyond what was necessary to supply their present wants. It would be highly absurd to expect industry among a people, or indeed any thing but indolence and listlessness among a people, who had been so long under the withering curse of the Slave Trade, and who might be plundered or murdered with impunity by any wretches who bore the livery of their Chiefs, or those who held them in subjection.

In

Missionaries will have two difficulties to encounter in this country, the demoralized state of the people, and the zeal of the Mahomedans among them. an incidental manner our travellers have furnished us with facts, the importance of which they did not seem to be aware of, which clearly show that the Apostles of the Koran are numerous and indefatigable on the banks of the Niger. There is a something in the doctrines of the Koran exceedingly favourable to the dominion of its votaries in such a country as Africa. They raise the savage to the condition of the barbarian; but as there is nothing in them to raise them above a semi-barbarous state of society, and there is something in them to prevent a higlier rise in the scale of civilization, a Christian community

in the centre of Africa, keeping up a constant communication with America, would soon gain the ascendency in that quarter. Could you plant another colony like that of Liberia on the banks of the Niger, it might be the means of rolling back the tide of Mahomedanism which appears to have set in with so strong a current from the north, and of establishing a Christian state in the centre of Africa. If this is impracticable, a mission may be undertaken on ordinary principles; but the conducting of it should not be left to ordinary men; and those who are to engage in it should go forth in numbers, and with resources at their command, from which a great impression might be soon expected, A solitary individual may do much among a reading people, and who hold many principles in common with himself, to which he can appeal in his addresses to their understandings and to their hearts. But in such a country as Africa we must concentrate our strength, and keep firm possession of every inch we have gained, and make use of the resources we may be able to raise upon it for the further extension of our conquests. It was long a prevalent notion in England, that we might plant missionaries in Africa as a man may in the fertile lands of the United States plant acorns, and leave them to the rain and to the climate to spread themselves into forests. But our experience has shown the folly of that notion, and taught us if we would succeed in our object, that a more expensive and laborious system of cultivation is necessary. Like the trees of the field, the greatest difficulty is in rearing the first plantation; and when that has risen to a sufficient height to afford shelter, every new seed or young sapling should be planted within the range of its protection.

In making choice of a situation for a missionary station, a country that would repay the cultivator of the soil, and having if possible a water communication with the rest of the world, is to be preferred to an inland desert. The inhabitants of the rock and the dwellers in the wilderness are not to be forgotten, as the one are to shout for joy at the glad tidings of the gospel, and the other to bow down before the Saviour of men. But the most crowded parts of Africa are first entitled to our attention, and our object in following the other should be to induce them to exchange their wandering habits and their barren soil, to locate themselves on spots of the earth where they can cultivate the soil, and enjoy in Christian cominunities the social blessings of christianity and civilization. The desert is unfavourable to the fruits of christianity and after repeated trials we have found that they never can be brought to perfection, or cultivated to any extent, unless they are literally planted by rivers of water, where they may rise into families and tribes. The ark of the Lord was carried into the wilderness: but it would not have remained long with Israel if the people had been allowed to choose the wilderness as their final abode.

:

The civilization of the people among whom we labour in Africa is not our highest object; but that object never can be secured and rendered permanent among them without their civilization. Civilization is to the Christian religion what the body is to the soul; and the body must be prepared and cared for, if the spirit is to be retained upon earth. The blessings of civilization are a few of the blessings which the Christian religion scatters in her progress to immortality; but they are to be cherished for her own sake as well as for ours, as they are necessary to perpetuate her reign and extend her conquests.

Because multitudes in England and America have lost their religion, to which they are indebted for their civilization, many pious people make light of civilization as connected with the labours of missionaries: but it should never be lost sight of that if men may retain their civilization after they have lost their religion, that there can be no religion in such a country as this without civilization; and that it can have no permanent abode among us, if that civilization does not shoot up into regular and good government.

The importance of education, and particularly of early education, begins only to be felt by many of our missionaries. The preaching of the gospel is the great