44 VARIOUS LETTERS carrotty or red Negro. If these two testimonies, since 1800, be correct, then the anachronism of which I am accused in the New Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica, (title Africa,) is misapplied.

Many of this king's civil officers, however, in 1800, were muselmen j but the military were altogether Negroes.

However fervent the zeal of Muhamedanism may be at Timbuctoo, it is not, I imagine, sufficient to convert the Negroes, who have not the best opinion of the Muhamedan tenets. The Negroes, however, are disposed to abjure idolatry for any other form of religion that they can be persuaded to think preferable, or that holds out a better prospect ; a convincing proof of which has been seen by the readiness of the Africans of Congo and Angola, to renounce their idolatry for the Christian faith, by the conversion of thousands to that faith by the indefatigable zeal of the catholic missionaries, when the Portuguese first discovered those countries, and which, if the Sovereign of Portugal had persevered with that laudable zeal with which he began to promote the conversion of the Africans, the inhabitants of those extensive and popjilous countries might, at this day, have been altogether members of the Christian church !

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