by clusters of plantain and coco-trees,
which, defined sharply against a distant
blue horizon, formed in the midst of the
white sands a couple of oases upon which the
eye rested with pleasure."

The coco-eaters of the African coast are
a complete contrast to the intelligent cultivators
of India. I suppose it must be what
a Scotch philosopher would call the suggestion
of contrast which leads me to think
of them.

When sailing from the British islands towards
the equinoctial line along the west
coast of Africa, the coco-palms are seen upon
the shores from the coast of Guinea to Saint
Philip de Benguela. The geographical distribution
is about ten degrees upon either
side of the line. The occidental African
islands, St. Jago, Fernando Po, Prince, Annoboa,
Saint Thomas, and Loanda, produce
coco-palms abundantly.

The African coco-eaters cannot be said to
be any credit to their nurriture. The pagan
tribes of them are snake-worshippers. Trial
by ordeal and torture, Fetishism, amazons,
polygamy, and wife sacrifices, recal sufficiently
the condition of the negroes upon the western
coasts of Africa, wherever Mahometanism
and Christianity have not interfered to diminish
their ignorance and cruelty. They
are completely in the hands of their witch-doctors
and rainmakers. Happily, English-speaking
missionaries are at work among
them; and wherever Christian ideas spread,
the minds of savages open and their manners
soften. George Herbert supplies us in a
couplet with a quaint description of the
change which takes place in the savage, when
he says,

That his mind's neatness has its operation
Upon his body, clothes, and habitation.

Little reliance is, I suspect, to be placed
upon much which is confidently sent abroad
respecting the inhabitants of the African
coasts, although appearing with all the airs
and pretensions of ethnological science. Very
few facts have been published upon any
better evidence than hearsay, and hearsay is
not science. Many of the hearsays rest upon
the suspicious testimonies of slave-dealers
and exterminators, and their lay and clerical
dependants.

There is a generalisation, however, on which
I will venture. Were I asked what is a
savage, I would answer, He is a man who
cannot calculate. However exaggerated the
statement may be that whole races exist who
cannot count their fingers, the capacity of
calculation, the amount of arithmetic, the
perfection of mathematics, furnishes a good
measure of the civilisation attained by a race.
The civilised man is the man of calculating
prudence. He is the only man who prevents
himself and family from dying of want. He
has an empire over himself. Savages do not
plant and water coco-palms because they will
not calculate upon a future ten years hence.
The boy does not direct his course with a
steady view to the success of the man in his
prime. The middle-aged man does not work
for the old man, only a score of years off— a
different man, and yet himself. The irreflective
and uncalculating imprudence is hereditary
and universal. The community does not
discuss continually and decide wisely, respecting
its own interests; everything is left to
the chief and the rain-maker.

When races are deficient in calculating
prudence, they experience dreadful visitations
of famine. Millions of them perish of want.
Prior to the British occupation of India, and
until after the administration of Lord Clive,
famines were periodical in India, in which
millions perished in consequence of the failure
of the rice crops. The cultivation of the coco-palm
has helped to diminish the horrors
and lessen the frequency of these famines. On
the tropical coasts of Africa, and the African
islands, where European calculation does not
prevail, savage improvidence reigns. Of the
Sakelaves of Nossi-Bé, a French voyager
says: "Although they are very fond of the
fruit, it never occurs to them to plant the
coco-palm. Their gourmandise overcomes the
reasoning which tells them they might secure
an abundance at a later period, because they
are not accustomed to speculate respecting a
futurity of ten years." Such is the reckless
rapacity of the black fishermen of the Amirante
islands, that they are accused of having
destroyed all the coco-palms on several
coco islands, merely to obtain the luxurious
tit-bit formed by the topmost sprout, and
called the coco cabbage. The New Caledonians,
when they vanquish a hostile tribe, cut
down all their coco-palms ; and when one of
their chiefs dies, they wound his palms to
show that after the loss of their owner the
trees ought to languish and die. The growth
of coco-palms is prevented on Mitre Island,
Polynesia, by the Tikopians, lest their neighbours
should inhabit it, and deprive them of
the profits and pleasures of shark-fishing. In
the Harvey islands the natives steal each
other's cocos. The proprietors surround their
trees with dry leaves, that the noise of the
falling fruits may betray the presence of the
thief. When a native of Lord North's islands
is overtaken by want, his relatives and neighbours
expel him from their society, and drive
him away to die of famine alone. I have
seen birds do the like. When a shot wounds
any of the little auks upon a ledge of rock on
the northern shores, the flock scarcely condescend
to fly away, and, returning immediately
to their ledge, stop the annoyance of
the cries of the wounded by cuffing them over
the edge of the precipice.

It is scarcely a sarcasm to say of such
nominal races that they are degraded to the
level of monkeys. Such facts almost excuse
the bitter misanthropy of Bory de Saint
Vincent, who said there was a relationship