The coast line of these protectorates and colonies gives no idea of
the extent of their hinterland, which spreads back into the Sahara,
the Niger basin, and the Soudan. Sierra Leone, one of the smallest
of them, is as large as Maine; Liberia, where the emigrants still
keep up the tradition of the United States by talking like end men,
is as large as the State of New York; two other colonies, Senegal
and Nigeria, together are 135,000 square miles larger than the
combined square miles of all of our Atlantic States from Maine to
Florida and including both. To partition finally among the Powers
this strip of death and disease, of uncountable wealth, of unnamed
horrors and cruelties, has taken many hundreds of years, has brought
to the black man every misery that can be inflicted upon a human
being, and to thousands of white men, death and degradation, or
great wealth.
The raids made upon the West Coast to obtain slaves began in the
fifteenth century with the discovery of the West Indies, and it was
to spare the natives of these islands, who were unused and unfitted
for manual labor and who in consequence were cruelly treated by the
Spaniards, that Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapa, first imported
slaves from West Africa. He lived to see them suffer so much more
terribly than had the Indians who first obtained his sympathy, that
even to his eightieth year he pleaded with the Pope and the King of
Spain to undo the wrong he had begun.
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