KING ZAMRA'S LIFE AND ADVENTURES IN AFRICA AND CAROLINA.
SEVERAL professed autobiographies of Negro slaves have appeared of late years; one undoubtedly authentic in the life of Frederick Douglass, who was himself before the public but last week. Archy Moore was probably a fiction ; and the story of Charles Ball was avowedly the composition of another, though the facts were furnished by himself. All these, however, were probable and consistent in their matter ; the heroes were American Coloured people, with stories resembling thousands of others, both in the outline and the filling up. Notwithstanding the guarantee of Mr. Peter Neilson's name in the titlepage, we entertain greater doubts about the ac- curacy of The Life and Adventures of Zomba, an African Negro King: there is so much of the striking in the African adventures—so much of the extraordinary in the genius and acquirements of &mire, who figures in his own story as a sort of Negro Peter the Great—together with such a remarkable run of luck in the American incidents, so very like the contrivances of an inexperienced novelist—that we incline to suspect the book altogether.
Our suspicions do not extend to the outline ; which, though not common, is probable. We can believe that before the abolition of the American foreign slave-trade, a petty Negro chief might be desirous of visiting the States with a cargo of slaves, and be kidnapped and sold on his arrival by the Yankee captain, who pocketed the price of the king and slave-dealer, as well as of the 'venture his sable majesty had embarked. It is also possible enough that the "smart man," whilst perpetrating this villany, might have conscience sufficient to secure a good master for King Zamba, and leave part of his own value in that master's hands as a nucleus for the purchase-money of the monarch's freedom. There was nothing remarkable for a well-conducted urban Negro to accumulate sufficient to buy his liberty in the commencement of the century, or to serve as porter in an auctioneer's store, or to join a Methodist congregationand "profess religion." Of the accuracy or indeed the veracity of all beyond this, and some common facts about slavery in Carolina, we entertain the strongest doubt or total disbelief. Zamba might have been a clever fellow; but, as we have said, there is too much of Peter the Great in his enlightened curiosity—in his learning to read, in Africa, from the friendly skipper who sold him—and in his desire to visit foreign countries to improve his people. In some of his own doings as king and captain, there is a chivalrous gallantry which Peter the First never conceived ; and in his treatment of his enemies, and the ma- nagement of his own subjects, an enlarged philanthropy, which might have shamed all the existing European monarchs, (circa 18000 and which most assuredly an African chief never reached. The fortunate manner in which his wife joined him at Charleston is possible; things as extraordinary are occasionally read in the newspapers under the penny- a-lining head of " Romantic Incident" ; but the voyage of his brother-- in-law and successor to the throne to visit the dethroned Zamba, and the wealth he brought with him, remind one very much of the Minerva Press, or the juvenile tale of a verdant writer. The passages written by the editor and other friends to give "greater effect," (for there have been several hands in the composition,) are, critically speaking, somewhat too bold. We have the "smart" captain facetiously quoting the Duke's phrase of a "great moral lesson, long before it was used, or before Colonel Wellesley had emerged from comparative obscurity. The serious observations, whether of Zamba or his friends, are well enough in America ; but they seem somewhat out of place when the scene is laid in Africa, as if the quondam king were speculating upon the credulity of the faithful.
The evident patchwork and the probable falsifications (for invention in biography is not fiction but falsehood) destroy the value of the book ; but it has a sort of Robinson Crusoe interest, though of a flat and jognot kind. Bat, assuming the truth of all the American state- ments, its information is slight and of little value. Zamba's own position was too exceptional to give any general idea of slavery ; and what he saw or heard of its cruelties was urban, and could be paralleled in almost any book of travels. His book strengthens the opinion entertained of the more straightforward and gentlemanly olutracter of the Southern Whites, and confirms the slaveholder's argu- ment, which Franklin so happily parodied, that the Negroes are better off in America than at home. The native Africans he fell in with did not wish to go back; even King Zamba, as soon as he got his wife, had not only no desire to return to royalty, but could not be compelled to it by si sense of Christian duty.
Having now obtained the dearest object of my affections, I gave up all idea of ever visiting Africa: although at times my conscience whispered me that I, who had so largely partaken of the mercy of God, and had my eyes opened to the light of the Gospel, should act in some effectual manner, so that my poor blinded brethren in Africa might also in some degree, through my means, have an oppor- tunity of knowing the one true God. My conscience, I say, told me, that I ought to forego my own comfort and convenience, and that I should at all hazards re- turn to Africa and impart to my fellow men all that I knew about the Bible and aflavionr. These reflections often yet prey upon my mind; for I am fully con- vinced that the civilization and chnstianization of Africa will vet be mainly effected through the means and exertions of Africa's own children, or their de- scendants."
In a trip into the -country as attendant on his master, Zamba fell in with a slave who used the reasoning of Franklin's "Sidi Mahomet Ibrahim, member of the Divan of Algiers," if not his precise words. "Jem was an African as well as myself, but from another part of the coast. He acknowledged to me that, slave as he was, he preferred the life he now led to what he could recollect of Africa: for, said he, 41 am now good Christian, and go every day to meeting, which is three miles off; and although there is much cow- :kis:sling on some of the neighbouring estates, there is none of the continual mur- dering and fighting and homing as used to go on with my tribe and their neigh- bours in Angola. If I could only read Bible I should be so happy."
There are some striking enough adventures in Africa, if we could but believe them ; one especially where Zamba was folded in the embrace of a boa constrictor : and this is naturally told; but there is nearly a simi- lar tale of a young lady in America. In short, we do not doubt that there is such an individual as the person who figures as Zamba; or that he originally came from Africa, and gained his freedom in Charles- ton : all beyond is either commonplace, or looks to us like invention.
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