He was a person of He had passed forty of a slave, it is true,

joyed on the return to his native land. strong sense and of cultivated mind. years in this country, in the condition but apparently under a kind master. He had undoubtedly witnessed and to some extent shared a variety of social comforts and civilized improvements, unknown even to the most favored caste in the interior of Africa. Besides this, the power of habit is so great, that an entire change in the mode of life pursued for years, even a change for the better, seems to be made with reluctance. There are several instances in the early history of New England of men, women, and children, made prisoners of war by the Indians, carried back into the forest, and there brought up in a state little if any better than slavery. It sometimes happened, when in after-life persons of this description were ransomed by their friends, that they refused to come back to their families. There are cases, I believe, in which after returning and passing some time with their natural kindred, they disappeared and went back to the Indian families, into which they had been adopted.

This seems truly astonishing, when we consider the state of squalid want in which our North American Indians lived. When Winslow visited Massasoit in 1620, he received the best entertainment to be had at his court, but it was such as would be thought mean in a pauper's hovel; and yet men and women accustomed to such comforts as were afforded by a New England home, were found willing to go back to the privations of savage life. In Abdul's case, as far as material life is concerned, the contrast was probably against the state of things which must have met him, on his return to his native land. He had for the latter part of the time been employed rather as a confidential clerk than a slave; had travelled through the United States an object of curiosity and interest; had been admitted to the presence of committees of Congress; had been a welcome attendant on public meetings, where his extraordinary narrative awakened the deepest sympathy; had been invited and conversed with, probably complimented and flattered by men and women of accomplishment and intelligence, in the large towns which he

had visited.

A very different existence awaited him in the mud-built cabins of his native land, for such are the palaces of Teembo and Timbuctoo. His situation reminds one of that of Omai, the native of the South Sea islands, who was brought to England in the last century, and whose case is so beautifully described by Cowper in the "Task:"

And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found
Their former charms? And having seen our state,
Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp

Of equipage, our gardens and our sports,
And heard our music; are thy simple friends,
Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights

As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys
Lost nothing by comparison with ours?"

There was one great sorrow with which Abdul must have been overwhelmed on his return 'to Africa. The strongest and deepest impression which he carried back from the United States, no doubt must have been a horror at the thought of slavery. But slavery surrounded him in its worst and most barbarous forms at his father's residence. In reference to this terrible condition of African life, we may emphatically apply to Abdul the lines of the poet in reference to Omai,

"I see thee weep, and thine are honest tears,

A patriot's for his country; thou art sad

At thought of her forlorn and abject state,

From which no power of thine can raise her up."

In one point the case of Omai was different from that of Abdul. Cowper says of the former,—

66 we returned thee rude,

And ignorant, except of outward show."

Abdul, on the contrary, went back, as was understood at the time, a convert from Mahometanism to Christianity. If I mistake not, it was reported in this country, that on returning

to his native land, he again embraced the religion of the Koran. I do not know whether any evidence of the fact was ever received, and it is possible that I may do a wrong (it is certainly unintentional) to the memory of Abdul by the bare suggestion. If it be true that on his return to his native land and kindred, he embraced again the religion of his fathers, I should not be inclined to judge him with great severity. It is not probable that he became a Christian because he had carefully weighed the Bible against the Koran, or compared the evidence on which they respectively rest. His Christianity was probably a sentiment rather than a conviction. He became a believer, or what he thought such, in this country, because serious and good people around him were Christians. On his return to his native land, his new-born faith had to undergo a formidable trial. With the rush of thoughts that came back upon his mind, -country regained, home revisited, the surviving friends of his youth restored to his embrace, the minaret from which, in his childhood, he had heard the muezzin call the hour of prayer, again presented to his eyes,with all these faded ideas starting into fresh life, was it strange if his faith in the new religion should be shaken? Was it strange if the thought occurred to him, that the Bible might be the book of the white man, and the Koran the book of the dark races? We must remember that Christians have not done much to recommend their faith, on the coast of Africa, either to Mussulman or Pagan. If we pardon Henry the Fourth for turning Catholic, that he might become king of France, I think we should feel charitably toward an African prince, who, having become a Christian while held in Christian bondage, returns to the religion in which he was brought up, when restored to his native land. But I repeat, I have only a dim recollection that such was the case with Abdul.

I would close this hasty and imperfect sketch with one or two general remarks. The first is, that, whatever may be the case with some of the tribes of Africa, there are highly improved races on that vast continent. Abdul was no doubt a person of superior endowments, but it is clear that he belonged to a people not essentially below Europeans and

Americans in their capacity for intellectual improvement. And how few Americans or Europeans, after forty years' bondage, would have come out like Abdul, unbroken in body and mind! Let us all learn by this example to respect the African race, as one whose best specimens will not suffer in comparison with our own, and remember, that there are races in Europe, which fall far below the boasted standard of Caucasian blood.

Another reflection, and that of a most painful character, is, that Africans belonging to these superior races are just as likely to fall into the hands of the slave-trader as any others. The traffic in human flesh makes no distinctions. Other instances besides this of Abdul are known, in which men of education like him have been kidnapped in Africa, and sold into life-long bondage. It is sometimes mentioned as an aggravation of slavery among the Greeks and Romans, that men and women of high rank and refinement were, by the fortune of war, reduced by their conquerers to slavery. This was repeatedly the case, also, with the children of Israel. But we see in the instance of Abdul, (and no doubt the annals of the slavetrade could furnish hundreds of similar cases,) that Africans born and bred to high fortune, and educated in all the learning of the Mahometan countries, are liable to be subjected to all the horrors of the middle passage, and all the woes of hopeless bondage. If we could read these dark annals, I fear we should find that for one case like Abdul of a person of this description, able to bear up under this heavy and dispiriting load, hundreds sink down broken-hearted, and bury their sorrows in the only refuge which never fails the children of misery, the grave.

Lastly, Mr. Editor, I think our colored brethren throughout the country may derive a lesson of encouragement from the story of Abdul. He was evidently one who looked on the bright side of things, and hoped on even against hope, till the hour of fulfilment came. Mr. Bryant, in one of his most beautiful pieces, describes an "African Chief," who having been made a prisoner of war like Abdul and sold to a slave-trader died prematurely of a broken heart. Such would have been the

fate of Abdul had he struggled too fiercely against his cruel fate. By calm courage, Christian patience, and a genial hope of better times, he was enabled to bear the heavy burden of long years of subjection, and emerged at last to freedom for himself and family, and a prosperous return to his native land.