[1] Reprinted from “South Atlantic Quarterly,” July, 1908.

[2] Smith’s Historie of Virginia.

[3] “Their features are recorded by their ancient enemies, never by themselves, Egyptian kings, who from earliest times of antiquity, came often into collision with the blacks, and had them figured as defeated enemies, as prisoners of war, and as subject nations bringing tribute. Their grotesque features, so much differing from the Egyptian type, made them a favorite subject for sculptural supports of thrones, chairs, vases, etc.; or painted under the soles of sandals, of which instances abound in museums as well as in the larger works on Egypt.... The other artistical nations of antiquity knew little of the negro race. They did not come before Solomon’s epoch into immediate and constant contact with it. We see soon after, however, a negro in an Assyrian battle scene of the time of Sargon, at Korsabad. He might have been exported from Memphis by Phœnician slave-dealers to Asia, where he fell fighting for his master against the Assyrians.... On the remarkable relief of the tomb of Darius Hystaspes, at Persepolis, we have the negro as a representative of Africa. The Greeks seldom drew the blacks; still, on beautiful vases of the British Museum, we meet with the well known negro features in a battle scene. Another such vase with the representation of Hercules slaying negroes has been published by Mecali. Etruscan potters, who liked to draw Oriental types, molded vases in the shape of a negro head and coupled it sometimes with the head of white males or females. The British Museum contains several of these very characteristic utensils.... We possess effigies of negroes drawn by six different nations of antiquity: Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, from about the eighteenth century B.C. to the first centuries of our era, which all speak for the unalterable constancy of the negro type such as in our day.”—Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races of the Earth.

[4] Lecky, Rationalism in Europe.

[5] Ranke, History of the Popes.

[6] Dean Farrar.

[7] Heylyn’s Cosmographie, 1657.

[8] “You may observe, by my proclamation, that I offer freedom to the blacks of all rebels that join me, in consequence of which there are between two and three hundred already come in, and those I form into corps as fast as they come in, giving them white officers and non-commissions in proportion.”—Letter from Lord Dunmore to General Howe, dated Williamsburg, Va., Nov. 30, 1775.

[9] Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson.

[10] Jefferson’s observations to Meunier.

[11] Hamilton’s Colonial Mobile.

[12] United States Statutes at Large.

[13] “The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England who is now here soliciting donations for a college in Green County, in Tennessee, tells me that when he first determined to engage in this enterprise, he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar one for persons in a civil character, at the head of which he wished Mr. Adams to put his name, he being then President, and the application going only for his name and not a donation. Mr. Adams, after reading the paper and considering, said, He saw no possibility of continuing the union of the States; that their dissolution must necessarily take place; that he therefore saw no propriety in recommending to New England men to promote a literary institution in the South; that it was in fact giving strength to those who were to be their enemies; and therefore he would have nothing to do with it.”—Thomas Jefferson, The Anas, Dec. 13, 1803.

[14] United States Statutes at Large.

[15] North American Review, February, 1824.

[16] Right of Search, Daniel Webster.

[17] Journal de Commercio, Rio, May 26, 1856.

[18] Mobile Register, December, 1858.

[19] Heylyn’s Cosmographie, 1657.

[20] Narrative of Kazoola.

[21] The R. B. Tainey was owned by the Meahers, and is described in advertisements of that time as a “new, elegant, and light-weight summer packet; Captain Jim Meaher. Side-wheeler, drawing eight inches of water with elegant and spacious staterooms and large well-ventilated cabins, carrying one hundred and fifty passengers.” She had been named for Chief Justice Tainey who had handed down the famous Dred Scott decision.

[22] These meetings probably account for the reports which have been recurrent that the Tarkars met secretly and practiced barbaric rites.

[23] Charlee too has recently passed away, 1914.

[24] Mount Vernon is some miles beyond Plateau.

[25] When Albiné first came to America she was very fat and refused to eat except just enough to keep her alive. When she grew to have confidence in the whites, she confided to Mrs. Foster, “Albiné not eat when she first come to America, because Albiné know she fat an’ did not want white people to eat her.”

[26] Reprinted from South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1908.

[27] There is very little literature about this class which is found in many parts of the world, and even that consists mostly of references to them by travelers and ethnologists. The fullest account with which I am familiar is an article by my uncle, the late Frank L. James, Ph.D., M.D., “The Geophagi, or Dirt Eaters,” which appeared in the National Druggist, of March, 1900. Microscopic examinations made by him of the “dirt” used by our Alabama, Georgia, and Carolina geophagians showed it to be a ferruginous argilla about ten per cent. diatomaceous. The “dirt eaters” of the various countries do not eat any kind of clay, but uniformly affect an argillaceous substance, containing more or less infusorial matter.

[28] Since the first publication of this article, hookworm investigations and treatment have become common in all infected districts of the South.