64 INTERCOURSE WITH AFRICA.

On Commercial Intercourse with Africa, (to the editor of the monthly magazine.)

Sir, The plan of your correspondent, for opening a commercial intercourse with the interior of Africa, appears to me so direct and simple, that I am only surprised it has not been thought of before. The Moors are the merchants of Africa j the chain of communication that runs from the states of Barbary to the negro kingdoms, and from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. To judge of the humanity of these people from the accounts of shipwrecked sailors, whom they have dragged into slavery, and then liberated for money, would be not less fallacious than to estimate the character of the English nation from the plunderers of the wrecks on their coast. From such accounts, the name of Moor has inspired us with horror; and Parkas detention at the camp of Ali, one of their chiefs, has contributed to confirm it. Park, however, so far from endeavouring to conciliate his captors, endeavoured, by his own confession, to appear as contemptible as possible in their eyes ; and yet, with this disadvantage, the greater part of the miseries he endured proceeded from the climate and the Irritation of his own mind.

The Arabs of Sahara are the carriers of merchandize throughout North Africa, and the Moors are in the constant habit of selling gum to the French on the Senegal. The French say