Usbek to the Same.
AS we have nothing further to say of Asia and Europe, let us pass on to Africa. But as we do not know the innermost parts of it, we can hardly say any thing of it, except of the coasts. Those of Barbary, where the Mahometan religion is established, are not so well peopled, as they were in the times of the Romans, for the reasons I have already mentioned. As to the coasts of Guinea, they must have been terribly stript in two hundred years, that the petty kings, or heads of villages, sell their subjects to the European princes, to be transported to their colonies in America. What is very extraordinary is, that this very America, which receives every year so many new inhabitants, is itself a desert, and gains no advantage by the continual losses of Africa. The slaves who are removed into another climate, perish there by thousands; and the labour of the mines, in which the natives of the country and the strangers are continually employed, the malignant vapours that arise from them, the quicksilver which they are obliged always to use, destroy them without remedy. Nothing can be more ridiculous than to destroy an innumerable number of men, to take out of the bowels of the earth gold and silver: those metals in themselves absolutely useless, which are only riches because they have been fixed upon for the marks of riches.