the author of this book, though a quadroon, is pleased to announce himself the “colored man around the world.” not because he may look at a colored man’s position as an honorable one at this age of the world, he is too smart for that, but because he has the satisfaction of looking with his own eyes and reason at the ruins of the ancestors of which he is the posterity. if the ruins of the author’s ancestors were not a living language of their scientific majesty, this book could receive no such appellation with pride. luxor, carnack, the memnonian and the pyramids make us exclaim, “what monuments of pride can surpass these? what genius must have reflected on their foundations! what an ambition these people must have given to the rest of the world when found the glory of the world in their hieroglyphic stronghold of learning,” whose stronghold, to-day, is not to be battered down, because we cannot reach their hidden alphabet. who is as one, we might suppose, “learned in all the learning of the egyptians.” have we as learned a man as moses, and if yes, who can prove it? how did he come to do what no man can do now? you answer, god aided him; that is not the question! no, all you know about it is he was “learned in all the learning of the egyptians,” that is the answer; and thereby knew how to facilitate a glorious cause at heart, because had he been less learned, who could conceive how he could have proved to us to be a man full of successful logic. well, who were the egyptians? ask homer if their lips were not thick, their hair curly, their feet flat and their skin black.
but the author of this book, though a colored man, hopes to die believing that this federated government is destined to be the noblest fabric ever germinated in the brain of men or the tides of time. though a colored man, he believes that he has the right to say that, in his opinion, the american people are to be the medes and persians of the 19th century. he believes, from what he has seen in the four quarters of the globe, that the federal tribunal of this mighty people and territory, are to weigh other nations’ portion of power by its own scale, and equipoise them on its own pivot, “the will of the whole people,” the federal people. and as he believes that the rights of ignorant people, whether white or black, ought to be respected by those who have seen more, he offers this book of travels to that class who craves to know what those know who have respect for them. in offering this book to the public, i will say, by the way, i wrote it under the disadvantage of having access to no library save walker’s school dictionary. in traveling through europe, asia and africa, i am indebted to mr. cornelius fellowes, of the highly respectable firm of messrs. fellowes & co., 149 common st., new orleans, la. this gentleman treated me as his own son, and could look on me as as free a man as walks the earth. but if local law has power over man, instead of man’s effects, i was legally a slave, and would be to-day, like my mother, were i on louisiana’s soil instead of ohio’s.
when we returned to america, after a three years’ tour, i called on this original man to consummate a two-fold promise he made me, in different parts of the world, because i wanted to make a connection, that i considered myself more than equaled in dignity and means, but as he refused me on old bachelor principles, i fled from him and his princely promises, westward, where the “star of empire takes its way,” reflecting on the moral liberties of the legal freedom of england, france and our new england states, with the determination to write this book of “overlooked things” in the four quarters of the globe, seen by “a colored man round the world.”
the author.
