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he lives and thrives ; and if he has a preference within this zone it is for the hot and humid regions lying between Columbia and the sea. Climate and produce suit him equally.
Squash is cheap, tobacco grows wild, and sugar canes abound.
Here, if anywhere, the Negro may hope to make a stand; and hither, it would seem, the Africans are tending, under the action of those mysterious laws of race which the Emancipation Act has called into free and easy play.
In other zones the Africans are falling off. Above this sympathetic zone, yet still within the Southern limits, runs a line of country from the Chesapeake to the Missouri and the Arkansas, in which Negroes dwelt and multiplied in a state of servitude.
But from these great districts they are now retreating towards the South and towards the sea. Missouri and Kentucky are casting out their Negro citizens, not by public edicts, but by agencies of which no record can be kept.
Maryland is following Kentucky, and Virginia following Maryland.
Whether the whole displacement springs from a mere shifting of the Africans from North to
1875.
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