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of the inferior soils resorted to: the price of labour will fall gradually as compared to the means of subsistence, and it will, at length, be for the interest of the masters to liberate their slaves, and to employ the more economical and productive labour of freemen. The same causes will then come into operation which formerly emancipated the villeins of western Europe, and will one day set free the serfs of Russia. It is to be hoped, however, that the planters will not wait for more than half a century for such an euthanasia of the institution of slavery; for the increase of the coloured population in sixty years would be a formidable evil, since in this instance they are not, like villeins and serfs, of the same race as their masters. They cannot be fused at once into the general mass, and become amalgamated with the whites, for their colour still remains as the badge of their former bondage, so that they continue, after their fetters are removed, to form a separate and inferior caste. How long this state of things would last must depend on their natural capabilities, moral, intellectual, and physical; but if in these they be equal to the whites, they would eventually become the dominant race, since the climate of the south, more congenial to their constitutions, would give them a decided advantage.

A philanthropist may well be perplexed when he desires to devise some plan of interference which may really promote the true interests of the negro. But the way in which the planters would best consult their own interests appears to me very clear. They should exhibit more patience and courage towards the abolitionists, whose influence and numbers they greatly overrate, and lose no time in educating the slaves, and

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ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

CHAP. IX.

encouraging private manumission to prepare the way for general emancipation. All seem agreed that the states most ripe for this great reform are Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Experience has proved in the northern States that emancipation immediately checks the increase of the coloured population, and causes the relative number of the whites to augment very rapidly. Every year, in proportion as the north-western States fill up, and as the boundary of the new settlers in the west is removed farther and farther, beyond the Mississippi and Missouri, the cheaper and more accessible lands south of the Potomac will offer a more tempting field for colonisation to the swarms of New Englanders, who are averse to migrating into slave states. Before this influx of white labourers, the coloured race will give way, and it will require the watchful care of the philanthropist, whether in the north or south, to prevent them from being thrown out of employment, and reduced to destitution.

If due exertions be made to cultivate the minds, and protect the rights and privileges of the negroes, and it nevertheless be found that they cannot contend, when free, with white competitors, but are superseded by them, still the cause of humanity will have gained. The coloured people, though their numbers remain stationary, or even diminish, may in the mean time be happier than now, and attain to a higher moral rank. They would, moreover, escape the cruelty and injustice which are the invariable consequences of the exercise of irresponsible power, especially where authority must be sometimes delegated by the planter to agents of inferior education and coarser feelings. And last,

not least, emancipation would effectually put a stop to the breeding, selling, and exporting of slaves to the sugar-growing States of the South, where, unless the accounts we usually read of slavery be exaggerated and distorted, the life of the negro is shortened by severe toil and suffering.

Had the white man never interposed to transplant the negro into the New World, the most generous asserters of the liberties of the coloured race would have conceded that Africa afforded space enough for their development. Neither in their new country, nor in that of their origin, whether in a condition of slavery or freedom, have they as yet exhibited such superior qualities and virtues as to make us anxious that additional millions of them should multiply in the southern States of the Union; still less, that they should overflow into Texas and Mexicc.

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156

WILMINGTON.

CHAP. X

CHAPTER X.

Wilmington, N. C.-Mount Vernon.-Return to Philadelphia.Reception of Mr. Dickens.-Museum and Fossil human Bones.— Penitentiary.-Churches.-Religious Excitement.--Coloured People of Fortune.-Obstacles to their obtaining Political and Social Equality. No natural Antipathy between the Races. - Negro Reservations.

Jan. 22.-I Now turned my course northwards, and, after a short voyage in a steamer from Charleston, landed at Wilmington, in North Carolina. Here I collected fossils from tertiary formations of two ages, the Miocene marls, and an underlying Eocene limestone, harder than that of Shell Bluff and the Santee canal before mentioned; but containing many of the same shells, corals, and teeth of fishes. I then went by railway to South Washington, visiting several farms on the banks of the north-east branch of Cape Fear river. Here I found cretaceous green marls, similar to those which I had seen 350 miles to the N. E. in New Jersey, with belemnites and other characteristic organic remains, some of species not previously known.

On several of the small plantations here I found the proprietors by no means in a thriving state, evidently losing ground from year to year, and some of them talking of abandoning the exhausted soil, and migrating with their slaves to the south-western States. If, while large numbers of the negroes were thus carried to the South, slavery had been abolished in North Carolina, the black population might ere this have been

reduced considerably in numbers, without suffering those privations to which a free competition with white labourers must expose them, wherever great facilities for emigration are not afforded.

A railway train shooting rapidly in the dark through the pine forests of North Carolina has a most singular appearance, resembling a large rocket fired horizontally, with a brilliant stream of revolving sparks extending behind the engine for several hundred yards, each spark being a minute particle of wood, which, after issuing from the chimney of the furnace, remains ignited for several seconds in the air. Now and then these fiery particles, which are invisible by day, instead of lagging in the rear, find entrance by favour of the wind through the open windows of the car, and, while some burn holes in the traveller's cloak, others make their way into his eyes, causing them to smart most painfully.

At Petersburg, Mr. Ruffin, the agriculturist, and Mr. Tuomey, accompanied me in an excursion to collect tertiary fossils in the neighbourhood, and I examined with much instruction the organic remains in their cabinets. At Washington I saw M. Nicollet, and had a long conversation with this eminent astronomer and naturalist, who died the year after. He had just returned from a geographical and geological survey of the Far West, and higher parts of the valley of the Mississippi and Missouri. He showed me the ammonites, baculites, and other chalk fossils brought by him from those distant regions, which establish the wide range of that peculiar assemblage of organic remains characteristic of the cretaceous era.

From the deck of our steam-boat on the Potomac we saw Mount Vernon, formerly the plantation of General