But to the fugitive—­our enslaved brethren flying from Southern despotism—­we say, until we have a more preferable place—­go on to Canada.  Freedom, always; liberty any place and ever—­before slavery.  Continue to fly to the Canadas, and swell the number of the twenty-five thousand already there.  Surely the British cannot, they will not look with indifference upon such a powerful auxiliary as these brave, bold, daring men—­the very flower of the South, who have hazarded every consequence, many of whom have come from Arkansas and Florida in search of freedom.  Worthy surely to be free, when gained at such a venture.  Go on to the North, till the South is ready to receive you—­for surely, he who can make his way from Arkansas to Canada, can find his way from Kentucky to Mexico.  The moment his foot touches this land South, he is free.  Let the bondman but be assured that he can find the same freedom South that there is in the North; the same liberty in Mexico, as in Canada, and he will prefer going South to going North.  His risk is no greater in getting there.  Go either way, and he in the majority of instances must run the gauntlet of the slave states.

XX

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES

Central and South America, are evidently the ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent; the advantages of which in preference to all others, will be apparent when once pointed out.[5]

Geographically, from the Northern extremity of Yucatan, down through Central and South America, to Cape Horn, there is a variation of climate from the twenty-second degree of North latitude, passing through the equatorial region; nowhere as warm as it is in the same latitude in Africa; to the fifty-fifth degree of South latitude, including a climate as cold as that of the Hudson Bay country in British America, colder than that of Maine, or any part known to the United States of North America; so that there is every variety of climate in South, as well as North America.

In the productions of grains, fruits, and vegetables, Central and South America are also prolific; and the best of herds are here raised.  Indeed, the finest Merino sheep, as well as the principal trade in rice, sugar, cotton, and wheat, which is now preferred in California to any produced in the United States—­the Chilian flour—­might be carried on by the people of this most favored portion of God’s legacy to man.  The mineral productions excel all other parts of this continent; the rivers present the greatest internal advantages, and the commercial prospects, are without a parallel on the coast of the new world.

The advantages to the colored people of the United States, to be derived from emigration to Central, South America, and the West Indies, are incomparably greater than that of any other parts of the world at present.