THE NEGRO RACE

        The field that is left to our consideration after we have disposed of the white Hamites of North Africa, the mixed brown peoples of the Sudan, the Malays of Madagascar, the Hottentots of South Africa, the Bushmen and the Pygmies, is all occupied by the Negro race, which forms the bulk of the African population, and fully deserves to be called the African race par excellence. The Hamites and semi-Hamites are mostly scattered in loose bands through the arid stretches of North Africa. Their unproductive soil, their nomadic habits, and their Mohammedan fanaticism preclude any rapid development of their countries and any phenomenal rise in civilization.

        Nearly all the land occupied by the Negro race is rich in minerals and in fertile soil; it is watered by abundant rains and numerous rivers. The tropical sun matures in the same field two or three yearly crops of fruits, vegetables, and cereals, which in the temperate zone yield only once a year. The Negro is agricultural, commercial and industrial, of a peaceful and teachable disposition. In the Pagan state he has no religious creed to oppose to Christianity. If this religion and civilization had been presented to him free from man-stealing, commercial cheating, rum-poisoning, and blood-shedding exploration, from voracious land-grabbing and wholesale village-burning, the end of this century might have witnessed a rush of thousands into the bosom of the Christian church, a colossal demand for civilized manufactures, and torrents of tropical produce flowing northward to Europe and westward to America. But it is useless to expect ideal perfection from man, or to worry over what cannot be altered. Let us be thankful for the progress in knowledge, in politics, in religion, and, chief of all, in methods, as compared with similar movements in the past.

        When I speak of the Negro race in Africa I include the so-called Bantu, who are probably, in race as well as in language, the purest stock of the black-skinned and woolly-haired variety of mankind. The distinction of Bantu and Negro races is a myth. The Negroes of Upper Guinea and the Sudan form one compact and homogeneous race with the Bantu of the Kongo Basin; their physical, mental and moral characteristics, their religious views, their folk-lore, and their social order is one and the same. The Negroes south of the

equator, the so-called Bantu, speak languages ruled by a common grammar and possessing a common word-store, thus forming one great family of languages; while the Negroes north of the equator, that is in the Sudan and Upper Guinea, speak languages which have retained more or less grammatical forms of Bantu grammar and word roots of Bantu origin, but these ruins are overgrown by a rank and wild vegetation which it will take philology a long time to penetrate. It is, however, easy in some of the better known languages spoken by Sudan Negroes to discover traces of distinctly Hamitic influence.

        The physical characteristics of the black or Negro race are: A large and strong skeleton, long and thick skull, projecting jaws, skin from dark brown to black, woolly hair, thick lips, flat nose and wide nostrils. The typical color of the race is not coal black but the dark brown of a horse chestnut. Observation shows that the darkest specimens are found on the borders, where Negroes have been in contact with lighter races, while in the population of the Kongo Basin, which has been almost completely free from mixture, the dark-brown type prevails.

        If we begin our survey of Negro tribes in the North, we first notice the Teda or Tibbu, who hold a large tract of the Sahara desert, north of Lake Tshad, in the very heart of the Hamitic field. No wonder that owing to this position, both the race and the language have paid rich tribute to the Hamitic surroundings.

        From Senegambia to Lake Tshad, we have seen that the Negroes are mostly ruled by Fulah conquerors, who have founded great sultanates, which have swallowed up the native Negro kingdoms and their names.

        In Wadai, east of Lake Tshad, the government is still in the hands of Negroes, who have maintained their independence against Arabs and Fulahs, thanks to their Mohammedan fanaticism. Wadai even exercises a sort of sovereignty over the neighboring kingdom of Baghirmi, where the bulk of the population is also Negro.

        In Bornu, the government is Fulah, and the Negro population strongly mixed with Imoshagh and Arabs, all professing the Mohammedan religion. In Sokoto, the population is Hausa, who are Negroes, but slightly mixed with Hamites. They are the most promising nation of the Sudan, and their language will probably manage to compete with Arabic and English over the vast area between Lake Tshad and the Niger. It is among the one hundred millions of Sudanese that Islam is still making important progress; and there at least it seems to raise the heathen to a higher plane of life.

        The peoples of Upper Guinea are mostly heathen, but widely honeycombed by Christian missions.

        The Wolofs of French Senegambia, near St. Louis, are very black, well built, less prognathic than Negroes generally, and their language differs considerably from that of their neighbors.

        Around Sierra Leone we find the Susu, Temne, and Mende tribes. Their languages have so much of Bantu structure that they deserve to be called semi-Bantu. In Liberia, we notice the Vei, made famous by the original syllabic character invented by one of their tribesmen; and also the athletic and hard-working Kru-men, one of the most promising nations of the west coast.

        On the pestilential Gold and Slave coasts, the Ephe, the Ga, and the Tshi speaking people, including the once important kingdoms of Asante and Dahome, are being thoroughly evangelized by the heroic workers of the Basel and Wesleyan missions.

        In the Lower Niger basin, the Yariba, the Nupe, the Ibo and the Efik, all speaking languages with crippled remains of Bantu grammar, are rapidly emerging out of the cruel rites of heathenism, and rising into prosperous Christian communities.

        At Kamerun we strike the great field of the Bantu languages, which is considerably larger than Europe. It is the field which the explorations of Livingstone, Stanley, De Brazza. Wissmann and Holub have brought so prominently before the public, and which the powers of Christendom have taken under a partly national and partly international protectorate.

        The Bantu, or Negroes south of the equator, are in some respects the most remarkable section of mankind. Separated from the rest of the world by wide oceans, virgin forests and the Sahara Desert, they have been less than any other race subject to foreign influences. No strange blood has altered their physical constitution; no foreign languages have permanently mangled the structure and the word-store of their principal forms of speech; no outside religion has seriously affected their conceptions of God, the spiritual, the animal and the natural worlds. Now they are receiving Christianity and the highest civilization the world has ever known, by methods which, however crude, inconsiderate and unjust they may appear fifty years hence, are yet far superior to all that our most sanguine forefathers could have anticipated.

        In the supplement to his "Languages of Africa" Dr. Cust counts 450 African languages, with over 150 dialects. The Sudan languages number 212, and their dialects 56. The Bantu languages are estimated at 180, their dialects at 60.

        With regard to the Sudan languages I will not express an opinion, as they are not in my special line; but concerning the Bantu languages, which are my special field, I am glad to be able to make the comforting statement that if we reverse the statement, and say that there are 60 languages and 180 dialects, we are much nearer the truth.

        As a boy, in my native land, I studied a big book giving specimens of about 70 dialects. Now, 60 of these 70 dialects covered only a small part of three language fields, German, French and Italian. Of the African dialects, we are far from knowing all, even by name; but of the languages, we know by name a great many more than really exist.

        Let me illustrate this by a few authentic examples. On the testimony of travelers and grammarians, Dr. Cust gives within the boundaries of the one Kimbundu, or Angola language, seven distinct languages. Now, these seven languages are simply dialects, and not all at that, of the language in which I am founding a Christian literature. The same process of reduction is repeated wherever sufficient material is obtained to compare the different dialects, which, until compared, seemed to deserve a separate place as languages.

        Thus, in the region between Tanganyika, Bangweolo and the confluence of the Lulua and Kassai, were placed peoples with different names, the Moluas,

the Barua, the Baluba, and the Bashilange, besides a number of others. My friend Dr. Summers labored two years at one end of this field, among the Bashilange, and gathered valuable linguistic material which he bequeathed to me. At the other end of the field, in Garenganze, another friend, the missionary Swan, also learned the language and published a vocabulary with a few chapters of a gospel. By comparing these materials collected at a distance of about 600 miles, I was surprised to find that it was the same language, and that the natives gave it the same name. At the same time I had opportunities to consult a Belgian explorer who had traversed the region comprised between those two extreme points, and also native Angolans who had accompanied him on his expedition. Their testimony confirmed my discovery. Further comparative study revealed the fact that other dialects are comprehended within the boundaries of this great Luba language, and that Luganda, at the north end of Lake Victoria, has practically the same grammatical structure.^*

        During my second stay at Loanda I collected a vocabulary of U-iaka, the language of the Ma-iaka, or Ma-iakala. On my return to America I discovered, by comparison, that U-iaka was practically the same as Ki-teke, in which Dr. Sims of Stanley Pool had published a gospel and a vocabulary. Further research disclosed the fact that several other tribes, the Northern Mbamba, the Buma, the Mbete and the Tsaia speak dialects of the same language. Still further investigation into the physical appearance and the customs of these tribes showed them to be identic in all points in which they differ from their neighbors speaking other languages. These facts combined proved that between the equator and the 8° South latitude there is a cluster of tribes speaking the same language and having the same customs; forming, therefore, one great nation.^*

        This nation the powers assembled at Berlin in 1885 have, without knowing it, and without the nation's knowledge, divided between France, the Kongo State and Portugal, France getting the lion's share.

        The discovery of this Ba-teke nation also enabled me to solve two or three historical riddles which had puzzled Africanists and still puzzle those who have not read my article on the Ma-iaka. The other Bantu nations and languages of some importance all deserve to be dwelt on at some length, but the time limit is inexorable, and I must dispose of them with a few words.

        In the German Kamerun, the Dualla language is being officially taught in excellent government schools and in the stations of the Basel missions.

        In French Kongo, or Gabun, the Mpongwe tribe is dying out, being superseded by the aggressive Fang. These speak a Bantu or rather semi-Bantu language. The Benga, on the sea-coast, rejoice in a considerable Christian literature, published by American Presbyterians.

        The Kongo nation, with its sub-tribes, the Luangu, Buende, Sundi, Solongo, Ndembu, Hungu and Pangu, is evangelized by seven or eight Protestant missionary societies, in addition to the thrice centenarian work of the Catholic church.

        In the semi-civilized portion of Angola the natives are joining hands and blending with the Portuguese colonists, thus preparing the creation of a powerful nationality.

        In the highland of Angola the Ovi-mbundu of Bailundu and Bihe bring the produce from the head streams of the mighty Kongo to the seaport of Benguella, where they barter it for cloth and rum, and also for fire-arms and powder, which enable the Ma-kioko to continue their audacious slave raids. These Ma-kioko, one of the finest looking tribes of interior Africa, with long plaited beards, have made an end of the once powerful empire of Lunda, reducing into slavery subjects of their former suzerain, the great Muatyamvo. If published vocabularies are correct, the Kioko tribe speaks practically the same language as the Ambuella, around the western headwaters of the Zambesi river, and so we would have here again one great nation and language instead of a number of unconnected tribes and dialects.

        The cattle herding Ova-herero, in German South Africa, so long the victims of the periodic raids of the Hottentots, begin to breathe and raise their heads since the German troops have finally put down the Nama chieftain Witboy.

        In the Upper Zambesi valley the Barotse under Lewanika seem to respond at last to the appeals of their apostles, Missionary Coillard and his colleagues.

        The Zulus, the Kaffirs, the Bechuana, the Batonga, the Matebele, the Mashona and the Ba-nyai, all south of the Zambesi, are important Bantu nations, who are coming more and more into public view as their territories are invaded by the gold hunters, land-grabbers, and by the messengers of the evangel of peace and holiness.

        In Portuguese Mozambique, between the Rovuma and Zambesi rivers, the great nation of the Ma-kua, including the Lomve, Metu, Ibo and Angoche sub-tribes, sees its territory gradually invaded by the whites who secure concessions from the Portuguese.

        The Wa-yao, the Ma-konde, and the Manganga, around Lake Nyassa, enjoy the protection of British and German authorities against the Maviti and the Arab raiders. Scottish, English, and German-Moravian missionaries teach thousands of their young people, while the Africa Lakes Company and an Industrial Mission employ thousands of strong hands in their commercial and agricultural undertakings.

        The tribes of German East Africa, among whom the Wa-Zaramo, Wa Zeguha, Wa-Sagara, Wa-Gogo, Wa Hehe, and Wa-Nyamwezi are the principal, speak all languages so closely related to that of Zanzibar, the Ki-Suahili, that the latter may finally become the literary language of all that vast region.

        All readers of the daily papers and of missionary journals have become familiar with the story of U-ganda. The wonderful changes which have there taken place since 1872, when the first missionary party entered the country, and which have transformed that semi-Pagan and semi-Mohamedan country and people into a semi-Protestant and semi-Catholic Christian nation more progressive and more promising than some sections of the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese nations, those changes, I say, are prophetic of what is about to happen among all the great Bantu nations we have passed in review.

        If my opinion about the future were asked, I should not hesitate to declare

my conviction that within one hundred years all Bantu-land will contain more than 500,000,000 inhabitants, will equal Europe in civilization, will be united in a great United States of Central Africa under a new and improved edition of our American Constitution, will both speak and write a common language, the mother-tongue of all Bantu dialects, as revived by scholars and enriched with the best developments of its daughters, and will produce master-pieces of literature, science, and art, vying with all the best that Europe and America will then be able to bring forth.

ORISHETUKEH FADUMA, B. D.
Native of the Yoruba Tribe, West Africa; Educated in Sierra Leone, London, and in Yale University

Religious Beliefs of the Yoruba People in West
Africa

BY
ORISHATUKEH FADUMA, B. D. West Africa

        We are now at a period in the world's history when the religions of Pagan nations are studied with a view to find out whether there is any point of contact between them and the more developed forms of religion; what are their beginnings; who were the prime leaders of their religious thought; and what changes have taken place since their existence. There are observances in the ritual of Israel found in the rituals of Egypt and Chaldea, nations by far older than the Hebrews. There is something, therefore, in common with Judaism and the ethnic religions which preceded it, and by which it was surrounded. Christianity is an evolution of Judaism, yet so evolved that it becomes a new religion. Mahommedanism is a corruption of Judaism, a mingling of monotheism with Arab heathenism. Max Müller, Rawlinson, Sayce, and others have contributed not a little to the study of heathen beliefs. The observations of anthropologists and ethnologists are helping us to get at facts, and draw conclusions which otherwise would be impossible. For the present we shall be satisfied with the presentation of facts, as they are not large enough to warrant us in making large deductions.

        To some of the beliefs of the Yoruba people I wish to call your attention. These people are known under four names: Yoruba, Yariba, Aku, and Oku. They live in West Central Africa, having Lagos as their seaport town. Of all West African tribes the Yoruba people are preeminently agricultural and commercial. As a commercial people, their lives are not spent in seclusion, but they come in contact with many native and foreign people. They have a native civilization which combines both the native and the Mohammedan elements. The ubiquitous Arab has somewhat modified his civil as well as religious life, but has not stamped it out of existence. They are by no means a savage, but are a semi-civilized people.

        The Yoruba people, like the Athenians of old, are given to much reverence. Reverence to traditions, reverence to ancestors, reverence to the gods and spirits, is interwoven with their beliefs. If it were connected with a belief which questions before it is practiced, the Yorubas would be a highly religious people. But when reverence is merely the result of custom, then men worship they know not what, and that which ought to be sacred in religion becomes painfully supertitious. When I speak of the Yorubas as very religious, I mean that they are very superstitious. Notwithstanding this, it is important to study their system of belief, or construct one if it has not been done. The study of religion in all its forms ought to be important to the student of

comparative religion. The genesis and development of religious belief, the stagnant condition of some religions and the apparent or real growth of others, the underlying principles which run through all and manifest themselves in what are termed the phenomena of religion, are subjects demanding a careful study. To make such a study profitable requires a sympathetic as well as an educated mind.

        In studying the pagan system of the Yorubas, we shall find the three stages observed in the evolution of religion. They are Fetichism, Nature worship, and Prophecy or Divination.

        1. Fetichism, the lowest, is practical, though not exclusively so. A fetich may be any object in which the god or gods convey their powers either to protect or defend the possessor. It is worn around the neck and waist, on the arms and wrists, on the ankles, or inserted into the hair. It is often concealed by an outer covering made of cloth or leather sewed tightly together. Human hair, finger nails, refuse of animals and men, precious stones, roots of trees, relics of the dead, in fact almost anything may be used. To the traveler it is a convenient vade mecum, for it is portable. It therefore takes the place of the idol and may be worn around the neck of the holder. It is a kind of a god in times of emergency. It brings good luck to the individual who wears it, and protects him from injury. It guards him against the attack of witches and the malevolence of personal and private foes. The hunter ties it near the muzzle or nipple of his gun, and it is thought to make him aim straight at his victim. What, in ordinary civilized life, would be considered a trained and skilled marksman, would be attributed to the charm or fetich. In all such cases it is some spirit whose power is felt through the charm, which is its medium. The favor or disfavor of heaven is communicated through the material medium called fetich.

        2. In Nature worship, we have the image of a god made out of stone or wood. The god has the form and features of a person. It is generally an ill-shapen image, but this is probably due to the primitive state in which art is. It belongs to a high stage of civilization to produce the work of a Phidias, a Praxiteles, or a Polycletus. Yet Greek art had quite as humble beginning. Side by side with this nature worship is fetichism, so that one is at a loss to say whether the former is really an evolution from the latter. The worshipper of images has also a fetich which may be about his person even when he is in the act of worshipping his image.

        3. Along with fetichism and idolatry is developed a system of priestcraft which may be at one time esoteric, and at another time exoteric. A man may make his own fetich, but when difficulties of a peculiar kind arise, the trained hand is sought. It is the man whose chief employment is to make fetiches, who knows the nature of diseases, foretells the future, and is in closer touch with the god or gods. Such a man has a powerful influence in the community; he is a physician of rare ability, a herbalist of repute, and a magician. He is sought by the high and low, consulted in family disappointments, and at the King's Court. His advice is taken, and he is dreaded by all.

        The Yoruba gods are many. There is a god of war, like the Roman Mars or the Ares of the Greeks, who leads armies to victory and to whom human

victims are offered. There is Shango, the god of thunder, whose priests are white-robed. He is like the Jupiter Tonans of the Romans. When he thunders and sends forth his lightning upon the dwellings of men, his priests are sought after to appease his wrath. There is a god who, like Ceres, controls agriculture, to whom the first fruits of the field are offered. Over the sea presides the water-god, who, like Neptune, calms the stormy seas and puts to flight the storm clouds. There are gods of the mountains, valleys and hills; gods of the market and pathways, household gods the peculiar treasures of individual families, and gods of the nation. There are several names by which the gods are known, but above them all is Olodumare, the supreme king both of gods and men, who assigns a sphere of influence to each of the local gods. He holds precisely the same relations to the gods as Jupiter held in the Roman pantheon, or Zeus in the Greek. The existence of these gods seems to be an arrangement by which the supreme God is helped to rule the country. Since the native worshipper cannot see the supreme god who is hid somewhere in the clouds, his nature demands the presence of one to whom he can appeal in cases of need, some one who can be seen by the naked eye. The necessity therefore arises for the fabrication of an object which would be a symbol of the Supreme God. It is a remarkable, though crude, expression of the people's need of an agent who shall come between them and their God, an agent who is not clothed with spirituality, but who can be seen and touched. To this visible obiect his needs are made known. Through all ethnic religions such an agent is found. In Christianity we have a solution of this need, and the truest expression in the living, the personal, visible, and tangible Christ, who is God clothed in flesh, and the mediator between God and man. Through the ages men have been groping in the dark, seeking, if haply, they may find such a Christ.

        The Yoruba worships the objects of nature above him. The moon is one of them. Constant reflection on its movements sharpens his intellect. He is a good calculator. He tells his age by the number of moons he has seen. To him the moon is a harbinger of joy or sorrow; he supplicates it when it appears in its new crescent robe to avert all evils of the new month. Throughout the system of image worship, what appears first as a symbol of the God, is now confounded with, and worshipped as God. The distinction between them is lost, so that if there is a monotheism in the system, is lost in polytheism. God, as spirit, is lost and absorbed in God as matter.

        Of the origin of the human race, the Yorubas have a very faint conception. The first pair sprang from that section of Yoruba country known as Iffe (Iffeh).

        Of the future life they have some conception. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls is prevalent. The spirit of a good man is changed at death to some good being or animal, while that of a bad man is transformed to a ferocious animal or an evil spirit. Ancestors may be born again in the world. The children, called Abiku, that is, children who die prematurely, are said to return to life at the next birth of its mother, if at this birth the child also dies prematurely. At the death of one, messages are sent in tears and songs to dead relatives and friends. Feasts are observed and sacrifices offered to the dead. On the third day after burial, an early morning sacrifice of meal

and oil is made at the grave of the deceased, and his spirit is supposed to eat a portion of it. On the seventh day after burial there is a feast preceded by a morning sacrifice, in which the spirit of the deceased and the spirits of ancestors partake. After this feast and sacrifice, the spirit of the deceased is supposed to leave the old home and take interest in the welfare of surviving friends.

        The whole system of Yoruba worship is steeped in spirit worship. Spirits are found everywhere. They are the controllers of diseases. When a child suffers from convulsions it is because he sees a spirit which frightens him. The medicine man, therefore, washes his eyes with a solution prepared from the bark of a medicinal plant. There are spirits which exert evil influence in the world. These may be seen, and are called egbere (aygbayray). They are of diminutive stature; they leave their graves at midnight and return to them before daybreak. Sheep-riding is their delight. They are the cause of the destruction of sheep by disease. The medicine man is often called to drive them away by shooting at them, or supplying individuals who are spirit-frightened with a charm or fetich as a protection. There are also good spirits. These exert good influence in the world, and protect men from danger, and appear to them in dreams. If there is sorrow at the grave of the departed it is relieved after the seventh day, when a feast of rejoicing follows, and by the knowledge of the fact that the spirit of the deceased has gone to join those of his ancestors. There is a kind of spirit telegraphy by which the present and the future are connected.

        The sacrificial system of the Yorubas has nothing peculiar. It has the same characteristics found in other systems of pagan religions. The one who offers sacrifice may be the father of the family in ordinary cases. In peculiar and trying circumstances a trained hand is sought. The medicine man is qualified by years of training for the post. The offices of doctor and sacrificer are invariably combined under the same individual. Sacrifice has a raison d'etre. It is, first of all, prophylactic. Men feel the pain of diseases, they know that evil spirits surround them and are seeking their destruction, they are aware of personal foes who are bent on their destruction; they are, therefore, compelled to sacrifice to a God and ask for his protection. The idea of communing with the gods is not a prominent one, though it is found in the system. What stands in bold relief is the feeling of deliverance and salvation from outward, not inward, evils. No one ever thinks of praying to the gods for strength to overcome personal feelings and to resist temptations. When one is surrounded by evil, or has escaped some calamity, the god is approached and his protection sought, or he is thanked for averting a calamity. Sacrifice is a prophylactic, as well as a thank-offering.

        The religion of the people is one of fear and suspicion. The worshipper does not love his god, but fears him. The same mental act which is produced when the worshipper approaches his god, is also produced in children and wives when they approach their fathers and husbands. The same is produced in subjects when they approach those who are in authority. The father of a family, as well as the king or chief of the tribe, holds the same relation to his children or subjects as the god holds to the nation. It may be said that children fear rather than love their fathers, and wives submit with dread to

their lords. The obedience required of them is an enforced one; it does not spring from love, but it is caused by fear. The native rule is like the rule of his gods, it is stern and severe. If there is any love, it is swallowed up in fear. It may be said, however, that this is not a peculiar characteristic of the Yoruba people and religion, but a general characteristic of Pagan Africa.

        In the Yoruba sacrifice are included fruits of the earth, such as bananas, kola nuts, meal made of beans, oil (generally palm oil), animals and human beings. Kola nuts occupy an important place in worship. Through it the god makes known his will to men. The worshipper, after separating the two halves of the nut, throws them on the ground; if the inner parts turn upwards they signify that the god looks with favor upon the worshipper; if they turn downwards they indicate the god's disfavor. In all human sacrifices the blood is the most important. It is offered as a libation to the god and poured on the ground. While the worshipper may become impoverished by constant sacrifice, the sacrificer or medicine man is often enriched by it. Salvation sought through such a system is one of sacrifices and works.

        The gods often reveal their minds to men by means of omens. If one, on the eve of an expedition, were to hit his left toe against an object, it presages evil; if the right toe, the result would be a success. Often the traveler is obliged to return home and wait for a favorable omen. If a snake is seen crossing a path, it means that some misfortune will happen to the beholder. Shooting stars are sure signs of the removal of friends from earth by death. The flight or cries of certain birds point to disaster.

        The Pagan system of Yoruba worship, like all religions which are in a state of childhood, is not philosophical but poetical, a religion inspired by fear rather than love. There is no element found in it which is not present in similar religions. God is the fundamental conception; worship of Him includes prayer, which is an expression of the soul's yearnings, and sacrifice, which is made to appease God and escape danger. "Nor is it possible to conceive the existence of a race, properly human, without some germ of the sense of spiritual mystery which so rapidly widens out into an apprehension of that Infinite 'whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere.' But such an apprehension involves the feeling of dependence, subordination, the craving after harmony with that larger power which is dimly discerned. And it is in this distinctively human apprehension which, while fairly discoverable in the humblest, remains in the highest humanity wholly unresolvable into any forms of the logical understanding, that we must seek the essential nature of religion.'"^* We cannot deny to these people the possession of a religious or a moral sense. Both exist, though corrupted and distorted. At the root of their religion is God, yet it leads away from God, and finally loses Him, because it has from the start a wrong conception of His nature, and confounded Him with His works. The study of the philosophy of religion is bringing us nearer and nearer the truth that the conception of God is universal, and that it is only the "fool that saith in his heart there is no God." "In this experience of God, every soul of man has a part. He is not far from every one of us; in Him we live and move and have our being.

        It is possible for every soul, however degraded, however ignorant and humble, to feel after Him and find Him (Acts xvii: 27-28).

        The knowledge of God is common knowledge. However imperfectly and pervertedly men may hold it and express it, all have it, so that when the higher Christian truth comes to a soul, it does not come to one ignorant of God, but to one that, from its earliest days, has felt his presence and power."^*

CYRUS C. ADAMS
One of the Editors of The Sun, New York; Geographer and Africanist; Member of the American Geographical Society; Late Delegate to the International Geographical Congress, at London; Member and Contributor of the Brooklyn Geographic Institute and the National Geographic Society at Washington, D. C.

Some Results of the African Movement

BY
CYRUS C. ADAMS
GEOGRAPHER, EDITOR New York Sun

        The particular results of the African movement of which I shall speak to you have little to do with exploration, commerce or other material outcome of the work in Africa. Let us consider rather some of the ideas to be derived from the experience of the past generation of African workers. If we wish to study Africa, if we wish to work for Africa, at home or there, what ideas, what lessons drawn from experience, will help us to start right, and to make our energy most effective? I shall try to indicate some of these lessons. It is a wide subject and in this paper I can do no more than briefly to emphasize, without enlarging upon these ideas.

        To do good work we must work intelligently and therefore must use as effectively as we can, the literary helps within our reach. We are confronted at once with the difficulty that the mass of literature is already too enormous to be examined except by specialists. Much of it is very valuable, much is commonplace, much is worthless. Then a great deal of the best material is not accessible to those who read English only. The best and latest works on Liberia, on the rich and populous west and central Soudan, the Cameroons and German East Africa have not yet been translated from the German. The fullest summary of the Congo basin and the remarkable work there, in all their aspects, is published in French. Considerable of the most valuable material is scattered through the publications of geographical societies and has not appeared in book form at all. There have recently been published or are now preparing some compendiums on Africa and some bibliographies. They will be very helpful but not wholly adequate for our special needs. I believe money, time and energy will be economized if those persons whom America sends out as missionaries, teachers or merchants are helped, first, to get right at the gist of the most reliable literature about the particular districts to which they are going; and second, to become thoroughly imbued, before they leave home, with some of the fundamental ideas, the outgrowth, sometimes, of bitter experience, that seem necessary to success. Here is an illustration or two of what I mean:

        The Scottish mission at Blantyre in the Nyassa Highlands, was founded upon the idea that the missionaries might well combine with their religious and educative work, the functions of a civil government and even of commercial and industrial enterprise. It was simply an attempt to carry out the views of Livingstone, himself, who discovered this land; and the history of that endeavor is one of the most instructive chapters in the story of African missions. I can only say here, the experiment was a dismal failure, even scandal resulted,

and in the blackest days, that splendid work was saved from utter collapse, apparently, by the deciding voice of one man in Edinburgh. Let governing power, commercial endeavor and religious and educative influence, work for good ends in parallel lines which, you know never run together, and the desired unity of effort is attained. Combine these various functions in one agency, and disaster seems inevitable among these barbarous tribes. This was a lesson that was not learned except by actual experiment.

        Again, do you suppose that when the missionary societies began to send medical missionaries to Africa, they had any very clear idea as to what the greatest potency of these physicians and surgeons would prove to be? It is already found in some places, that these specialists are striking at the very root of an evil which, perhaps more than any other one influence, keeps the African native degraded. That is the superstition which has invested the fetich doctor with mysterious power over human life and happiness. No man can grow while he believes the fetitch doctor can exorcize the evil spirits that make him ill, or sell him charms that bring victory in battle. No man can progress so long as a greedy chief, eager to seize the little property his subject has gathered, may call in the fetich man to declare him a witch, and condemn him to death. The glimmer of an idea is dawning upon many of these people, that the real healers are these men who have come among them and that there is nothing supernatural about their skill. They are beginning to see the imposition that has kept them prostrate. Governments have observed this tendency of medical work and it is helping to stimulate them to supplement the influence of medical missionaries in more drastic fashion. In an immense area of inner Africa, to-day, it is a crime to practice fetichism. The law has lately been proclaimed throughout the great territory of the British South Africa, from the South African Republic to Lake Nyassa, that any fetich doctor will be severely punished if convicted of practicing his arts.

        These are two among many facts and ideas, the results of experience, that should be collated from the best sources for the benefit of those who are preparing for missionary work, with a view to instructing them in the nature, conditions and methods of their future activity before they ever see Africa.

        When we study Africa we must bear one thing in mind. That is that many books on Africa contain an undue admixture of crude personal impression which has passed, too often, for statement of fact. Two observers in the same field may give diametrically opposite views of it, the fact being, perhaps, that the more unfortunate pioneer, overcome by unaccustomed hardships, weary and homesick, sees everything as through smoked glass, very darkly. The late Montague Kerr, the first explorer to completely cross Mashona Land, wrote me once that he had seen nothing there giving promise that the region was worth occupying. He enlarged upon this statement in his book; and yet some thousands of white men are living there to-day, and two railroads are pushing towards the country. Now it takes time and study to learn to read critically about Africa, to learn to discriminate between what is best to retain and what to reject; and those who dip only here and there in desultory fashion into the immense mass of literature will get hardly the faintest idea of some mighty influences, of which I shall speak, that are working as quietly and as potently as leaven, preparing the native mind in

wide districts to become fertile soil in which the seeds of a higher life may germinate and thrive.

        I know of nothing, apart from the desire to Christianize these millions of men, that would so stimulate the practical interest of our philanthropists in the best African work as to make it possible for them, who cannot themselves give months and years to the study, to see clearly the trend of this African movement; and I know nothing that would be more useful in preparing young men for practical service than to guide them to those things in African literature that will most help and edify them.

        Where are the two or three educated young men specially qualified for such work who will give the requisite study to this literature, in the English and other languages, that will fit them to compile, with critical care, a list of references to the books, monographs and maps that have special bearing upon the work we want to do? I do not mean a bibliography of Africa for that work would be colossal and, for our purposes, redundant and unwieldly. The bibliography of Congo alone, now preparing, will contain 4,000 titles. But we need to be directed to the volumes and pages in which the best information may be found about regions in which Americans are to labor; their geography, resources, climatology and hygiene; character of natives; their amenability to good or bad influences; methods approved for winning their confidence and affecting their lives; coöperation given by governments to religious and educative work; their provisions for safeguarding the people from pernicious influences and the work done by government and commerce to elevate them; in general, the results and teachings of experience thus far. We need concise digests of the most helpful things that are not accessible except in foreign languages; and attention should particularly be called to any writings that give a good idea of the scope of this whole African movement; of the colossal-forces that are moving for the mastery of that continent; and of the profound, the astonishing effect already apparent throughout large areas.

        A concise monograph showing what these forces are and how they are beginning to affect African barbarism does not exist. When written, it should be a most effective instrument in stirring the hearts and impelling the cooperation of our philanthropists in the cause of African regeneration. These things will cost some money, but they will pay.

        Students of Africa like such work as the Haussa Association is doing. It was organized in 1892 to prepare for missionary work in that fine part of the Sudan between the Niger and Lake Tchad. Unable yet to enter that region, the society's agents have gone to accessible places where they may meet Haussas, have studied their language, whose field is far wider than that of any other tongue in Central Africa, and have collected much information to serve them when the time is ripe for entering the land. I have talked with missionaries in New York, just embarking for Africa, who had never read anything of the region for which they were bound, and knew nothing even of the hygienic rules they should observe to preserve their health. Hereafter such ignorance should not be possible.

        A gentleman in Europe, learned in African matters, has written a careful book in which he has attempted to figure out, in percentages, just what this

and that part of Africa will be worth to civilization and commerce. I believe that this is labor lost. There is no oracle among us to tell what the future of Africa will be. Just as the discoveries of five years revolutionized our notions of the hydrography of the Congo basin, so time and again have we seer the verdict passed by explorers upon this or that region or people overthrown by later studies. We do not yet know enough about Africa or the potentialities latent in her 175,000,000 of people to give value to any hard and fast estimate as to their part and place in future history. Africa's future depends upon her resources still almost untouched, the abilities of her people still unfathomed, and the capacity of the human race to advance and to this capacity no prophet has a right to assign limits. I say this much because certain writers have assumed that their dictum about the ultimate destiny of Africa is worthy of attention. If anyone were to ask me what the world will do with the desert of Sahara, I should tell him that we do not know; but we know, at least, that an edge of that desert has been made to blossom by the irrigation works of the French. The story of the white man's enterprises in Africa, every year for the past eighteen years, teaches us that pessimistic conclusions are not warranted by any events, however inexplicable or disheartening they may seem. We might fill all the sessions of this congress with illustrations of this fact. When Stanley began to plant his stations on the Congo he could induce hardly a native to lift a pound of freight or to sell an hour of service. For years, labor was brought to the Congo from Zanzibar and the Guinea coast. Even Chinese were imported to work on the railroad. But to day, Congoland is not importing labor. Fifty thousand of the people who live there are working for wages. They man the stations and steamboats carry on their backs thousands of tons of freight, and their humble service both in peace and war, is helping to develop their country. It was with the guns in their hands that the Arab slave raiders were driven out of the Congo basin and the natives themselves are grading the bed, and laying the rails of the railroad, that is now advancing a quarter of a mile a day.

        Eighteen years ago Colonel Chaille Long said in his book that Central Africa was a plague spot, that its people were miserable wretches, and he protested against sending any missionaries to Uganda in answer to Stanley's call, because they would meet only with misery and speedy death without any results to justify their martyrdom. To day 50,000 of these Uganda can read. Two hundred native churches are scattered over their country, and the largest church at Mengo, the capital, holds 3,000 people.

        The man who dedicates himself to Africa will find in facts as they are, a sufficient tax upon his resources and energy. He should be taught, early in his training, not to borrow needless trouble from, nor to be unduly perplexed by the dictum, so lightly spoken of writers who imagine that their few months or years in Africa qualify them to sum up and pass final judgment.

        When we make it easier for our people to study the whole African movement what are some of the ideas that are likely to get firm lodgement in their minds? I will tell you what I think some of them will be.

        As far as we can see, Africa, or the most of it, is for the African. He has a land in which other races cannot swarm as they have over America. His is the only race that has lived, thrived and done a man's full work in every

climate of the world. A few papers have recently been written in Europe to show, some that the native population of Africa is increasing, others that it is diminishing. I have seen no facts or arguments at all convincing in favor of the latter hypothesis. The most careful observers believe that in certain districts intestine wars or slave raids have diminished the population to a marked extent; that other areas which have suffered from evils less formidable are holding their own, and that Africa, as a whole, is growing in population. It is observed that certain regions have recuperated from evils that devastated them with remarkable rapidity. One of the best authorities on the statistics of the world's population (Der Bevölkerung der Erde), in its edition of 1891, assigns to Africa a population exceeding by 42,000,000 the total number of inhabitants in the three Americas, and the West Indies. We have no reason to believe that if the Caucasian race could invade Africa in myriads they would or could wipe out the native people, for the Negro is not made of the stuff that breaks and disappears, like the Pacific islander and the American Indian, upon the intrusion of other peoples.

        Every European government in Africa is seeing more and more clearly that the native is the largest factor in determining the prosperity of Caucasian enterprises there; that the more the native is elevated the more money can be made; and so some of these governments are conspicuously bending their energies to improve the condition of the natives, and the world never saw before such colossal efforts to this end among barbarous peoples, nor such significant results in so short a time.

        It is found that a very large part of these natives have offered little or no obstruction to the introduction of governments and other agencies of civilization. It is an impressive fact that, in the course of a few years, the agents of the International Association of the Congo, from which the Free State issued, made over 1,000 treaties with Negro chiefs in the Congo basin, by which they voluntarily ce ed their sovereign rights, accepted the government offered to them, and all this work was done without firing a shot.

        We may be thankful for the selfishness that is the basis of some of the most powerful influences yet brought to bear upon the African native. It is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European States to divide these regions among themselves. We can hardly realize here the intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded regions of Europe. Their industries, their manufactories are enormously productive but the people will suffer for food unless they can export. It was the crying need for new markets. for new sources of raw material, that drove these States into Africa; and we should be glad for Africa's sake that they have gone there to make money.

        We believe that it is immoral to waste or destroy useful things. Day by day, this moral truth is now being inculcated in the minds of many thousands of Africans by men who are not teachers of morality but whose purpose is to protect a source of wealth.

        All over the Congo basin is a species of the rubber plant whose product is worth exporting though it still has to be carried on the backs of men around 235 miles of cataracts. The native method of getting the sap is to cut off the vine, thus destroying the plant. There are nearly 150 stations of the State

and of the Belgian and Dutch trading companies scattered over the upper Congo and most of them are centers of the rubber trade. Everywhere the natives are told:

        "Rubber is valuable to you, for we give you cloth and wire and beads for it. It is valuable to us or we would not buy it. But you have been killing the vine, destroying that which is good for you and us. Bula Matari has made a law forbidding anyone to kill the rubber vine and you must not do so any more. This is the way to get the juice. Tap the vine, the juice will flow out for you, the wound will heal, the vine will produce again. But if you kill any more vines the law will punish you."

        And it does if they forget the prohibition. The result is that these thousands of rubber gatherers are beginning to protect the vine and are telling their children: "There is a plant that is good for men. You must never kill it." Surely this inculcation of one vital principle of morality by a government whose arm reaches far and which has the strength not only to teach but to insist and persist until the lesson is learned is an important fact in this African work.

        We know that very serious injustice has been done to natives by agents of governments in Africa. Instances of this sort from the Congo are now being investigated at Brussels, and it is high time, for the gravest outrages have been committed there and elsewhere. But we must not think because young men in the depths of Africa, unworthy of their trust, have been guilty of cruel and scandalous acts, that the government is indifferent to native welfare and unmindful of justice. The laws for safeguarding the natives are all right. The observance of these laws has fallen short of that measure of protection, of forbearance and mercy that the world must demand now and hereafter. But we should know that this sort of crime against the native is an incident, inexcusable to be sure, but not a policy. The regulations to secure the just and considerate treatment of uncivilized peoples, probably, were never more wisely devised than those of the various powers in Africa, with one exception. The world wants justice and protection for these natives and none will insist upon it more strenuously than the people of the leading powers that are identified with the African work.

        We protest against the evils of the drink traffic. They are bad enough. But do we not see, even now, some signs amelioration? The Royal Niger Company has just announced that it has doubled the import tax on spirits with the expectation that it will considerably reduce the trade. The British South Africa Company has just proclaimed its positive prohibition of the sale of spirits to natives throughout its immense domain. Such sales to natives are strictly forbidden in more than nine-tenths of the Congo basin. We take it for granted that missionary influence will be for good. The point I wish to make is that though various evils are marking the progress of the African work, they are, as I verily believe, but a drop in the bucket as compared with the fundamental and lasting good that governments and commerce are doing and will do.

        What grander thought can be conceived of the African native than that he himself shall be made the agent of the regeneration of his land. That is the idea, expressed or implied, underlying the policy of the African governments.

He is not to be a ward of the nations, placed on a rerseve like the American Indian; and see how skillfully some of the governments are managing him to bring about his willing compliance with their desire that he shall become the potent factor he must be in the development of Africa.

        A small tax is now levied upon 60,000 native huts in Mashona Land. That is right. Paying taxes is one of the privileges of civilization. The natives who pay this hut tax, were living, until recently, in those places that were loftiest and most difficult to reach, in constant terror of the Matabeles who killed them, burned their villages and carried off their women and cattle. The only hope in the lives of these miserable people was that they would escape the Matabele raids. Now they are living as safely as our own farmers. The valleys are covered with their gardens and their herds are multiplying. It is right that they should pay for the blessings of the wise and humane government they now enjoy and that has made life worth living; and what a wonderful impetus in the way of development is this fact that they have good government and are helping to pay for it. Now the Mashonas, like all Kaffir tribes, are rather thrifty. They hate to part with money or cattle; and Sir Cecil Rhodes's government is taking advantage of this trait to get them to work and train them in methods of work. The Mashona hut-owners are told:

        "You may pay the hut tax in money or cattle; but if you wish to keep these, come to our officials and work a month. You will be well fed and at the end of the month you will owe the government nothing and you will then have eleven months to devote to your fields and your herds."

        So thousands of these Mashonas are supplying their labor to the government in lieu of paying the tax. They are working on the railroad to the Indian Ocean, in the mines, in the townships, on the highways. They are well kept and well treated and it is found that many who came in to work a month remain six, and pocket their wages. It is also seen that their wants, though very simple yet, are increasing a little. They have discovered, for instance, that a blanket is a very comfortable thing on the cooler nights in their country. Now this revolution in native aims and conditions of life is occurring in the veriest wilderness of Africa where, ten years ago, no white man could venture except at imminent peril.

        If you can give a barbarous people the protection of a good government and induce them to work, all things are not only possible but are coming. So we see throughout an enormous area from the South African Republic to the north end of Lake Nyassa, in a considerable part of German East Africa, in Uganda, and for thousands of miles along the Congo and its tributaries, the effort is constantly widening to give government, which means good order and protection, to these tribes and to require from them what it is right they should pay for the security of life and property they are beginning to enjoy for the first time in their lives.

        The laws of the Congo State provide that crimes against native persons and property shall be severely punished; and though these laws have been violated by agents of the State, it is none the less true that as fast as the State has been able to extend its influence, inter-tribal wars and the practices of cannibalism and human sacrifices have been suppressed; and simultaneously the State is requiring from the villages thus protected a tax payable in rubber.

        The question, "Will the native African work?" is no longer a conundrum. It seems only yesterday that the white agents in German East Africa were writing, that to procure the essential native labor it would be necessary, in effect, to reduce the people to slavery; that is, they were to be forced to work. There is not a government in Africa, to-day, that needs to import labor. The cry from all over South Africa, where an enormous amount of manual labor is required, is, "Do not send us laborers. The natives give us cheap and effective service."

        You have heard of the fierce Matabeles, trained for war and not for work. Work was fit only for the women and slaves. They have, no longer, need for the assegai and shield. They could not go on the war-path if they would Their thoughts, turned from the pursuit of war, are now bent on getting ahead in the world. The men who, four years ago, could not own cattle because cattle were the prerogative of the king, now have their herds and farms. Who would have thought when the African Congress was held in Chicago, that it would have been written in this century: "Prospectors, in pairs or singly, wander all over Matabele Land and, far from being molested, they are hospitably received. The Matabeles are not a difficult people to deal with. They are pleased to see the white men in their country. They were cruel at the bidding of their king. As soon as the barbarous system that ground them down was destroyed, they became quite reconciled to the new order of things."

        Eight hundred of these soldiers who fought in their impis three years ago, to drive the white men out of the gold fields, came unbidden, in August last, to Bulawayo and secured work in the brickyards and other industries of the place; and the barbarous African is not only beginning to work his way to a higher place, but also to fight his way there, if need be. It was chiefly the former cannibals of the middle Congo, who chased Stanley down the river crying: "Meat, meat," who were the agents in driving the Arab slavers out of a vast region which will, probably never again be scourged by the evil that kills eight people to enslave one.

        The fact that in many ways, the native is putting his own shoulder to the wheel in this enormous work is clinching the conviction that has been growing for years, that all of tropical and sub-tropical Africa, the greater part of the continent, is for the Africans, just as India is for the East Indians, though a British possession.

        The missionary and the trader are sometimes preceding this extension of government influence, sometimes following it. Now one, now another is the pioneer; and the more there are of them all, the better. Experience in some large districts seems to show clearly that if you can double the points of contact between the natives and the civilizing influences, governmental, religious, educative, industrial, commercial, you more than double the good results; for the multiplicity of reputable foreign enterprises and stations, as a rule, increases the security of the native and hastens the day when the fact begins to dawn upon him that the good things brought to him, in other words, civilization, mean a diminution of his sufferings and an augmentation of his well-being. The constant effort must be to impress this fact upon him and when he clearly sees it the victory will be two-thirds won.

        I see not a particle of inducement for Afro-Americans to go to Africa to

earn the wages of a day laborer. The work required in every field needs something more than strength of hands. Any foreigner who cannot devote to Africa special gifts or attainments in some direction, or the self-effacing zeal of the Christian missionary or teacher, had better keep away. He can make a more comfortable living at home and Africa does not need him.

        But it would be surprising if Afro-Americans should not become prominent in one or another of the great departments of this movement. The field of missionary and educative work seems especially to invite them. Their capacity for the work, their strength to help Africa if they will only put it forth, needs no argument. I am glad the day has gone when every untruthful statement about Africa can be met only with a little argument and less knowledge. It is much easier and more convincing to be able to point to precedent and fact. If any one were to tell me that the millions of Afro-Americans, stronger every day as they are, cannot, if they have the impulse and the zeal, make for themselves a chapter in the history of Africa's development that shall be an enduring monument to their love of God and man, I should simply point to that little colony of freed slaves on the Grain Coast, struggling as they have been and still are. What work has Liberia done in politics, in agriculture, in morals, in religion that she need be ashamed to compare with the best results of European domination on Africa's coasts, and I do not except the British settlements of Sierra Leone and Lagos? Who would belittle the part that Liberia played in freeing West Africa from the curse of the slave trade; or what thinking man would dream of denying that the handful of freed slaves was a boon to Africa when he sees aborigines of Liberia fitted to take some part in her public affairs, prominently engaged in agriculture or commerce and spreading the tidings of the Christian faith among their people?

        Strive to get your ideas of Africa and the African work from the sources that are, admittedly, most reliable.

        Look upon all estimates of Africa's ultimate value to the world as purely tentative, for they may be proven, in the course of Africa's evolution, to be far from accurate.

        Remember that we are still in the early stages of African work, that much that is done is experimental, and that all the ideas that promise improvement in policies or methods should be widely published and studied if found worthy.

        In all your efforts, keep before you the thought that Africa is for the African; that the summing up of the work is to help him to help himself; that the destiny of his continent depends upon his development; and that in every stage of his progress his life and property should be shielded by laws as efficiently enforced as our own. I believe that no missionary center is true to duty that fails to make injustice and inhumanity known, and in such cases America should swell if she does not lead in a chorus of indignation and protest that cannot be ignored, and that shall teach governments and trading companies to look well after the fitness of the agents they send to Africa.

        Remember that government and commerce are and should be the natural allies of missionary enterprise, each having its own ends in view, but all essential factors in the same great scheme. I do not believe that more eloquent

tributes have ever been paid to the value of missionary work than those of men who have been prominent in the Congo government service. If the whole work thrives, there must be co-operation and mutual helpfulness; and the world should hear of any attempt by government agents or traders to impede or interfere with the development of missionary or educative endeavor. Neither public opinion nor the governments themselves will countenance such interference.

        Do not encourage interference, at least for the present, with any native customs that are not unsurmountable stumbling blocks in the way of the work. Missionary societies may draw a useful lesson from the example of the British South Africa Company, which is telling all the natives under its rule that it will not interfere with their laws and customs save that there must be no more raiding, no more murder and no more witchcraft. Establish the essentials of progress first, for premature attention to non-essentials may retard the general advance.

        Mr. Droogmans, a Belgian writer, has called attention to the fact that recent years have seen Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, none of them having possessions in Africa, organizing societies, raising funds, earnestly and actively promoting philanthropic work in that continent. We have been lagging behind, not because we have less love for humanity, but because we have not been organized as they are abroad for effective appeal to the philanthropic spirit of our people in behalf of Africa. The World is full of that spirit now and we can hardly conceive of the change that fifty years have brought. We can scarcely realize that up to the middle of this century the principal article of African commerce was man. How ghastly now appear the Spanish statistics of their traffic recorded, not in numbers, but in weight of slaves. Ten thousand tons of Negroes exported in a year!

        I should be glad to see among the practical results of this congress, a new department in some existing society, or better yet, a new organization here in the South, whose special aims should be:

        A more effective organizatiou of the philanthropic impulse and spirit that pervades our own country, for the promotion of good works in Africa.

        The preparation of literary helps and guides for the use of those who wish to study the whole subject or parts of it.

        The collection of data, by correspondonce and exchange of news with philanthropic African and missionary societies, at home and abroad, relating to the treatment of native tribes by foreign agencies of every sort, so that the influences at work and the measure of justice and humanity accorded, may accurately be presented for the judgment of public opinion.

J. C. HARTZELL, D.D.
Corresponding Secretary of the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Formerly Editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, New Orleans; For twenty-five years connected with the work for the colored people

The Division of the Dark Continent

By
REV. J. C. HARTZELL, D.D.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY FREEDMEN'S AID AND SOUTHERN EDUCATION SOCIETY

        Fifteen years ago, Victor Hugo said: "In the nineteenth century the white has made a man of the black; in the twentieth century Europe will make a world out of Africa."

        The fulfillment of Victor Hugo's prophecy has begun. During the past few years, the world has witnessed results in the dividing of the African continent among the nations of Europe which have been unparalleled in the annals of history and which mark a very important episode in the progress of the world. These results indicate the rising tide of Christian fraternity among nations; and also demonstrate to the Christian student of history that God is preparing the way for a rapid and mighty uplift of the African continent, not only in material things, but also for her millions of black people, of whom the world knows so little, and concerning whom there are such conflicting theories and prophecies.

        The preparation has been long, extending through many centuries, even reaching far back into pre-historic times, but the culmination has been sudden, remarkable and fraught with far-reaching consequences to that continent, its people, to Europe and to the world.

        The continent of Africa lies in the eastern hemisphere, south of Europe with the Mediterranean Sea between, and the Red Sea separates it from Asia on the northeast, except the Isthmus of Suez, a narrow strip of land between that sea and the Mediterranean. As the Suez canal crosses this neck of land, Africa, in fact, is a vast island. On the north is the Mediterranean, on whose banks have arisen and passed away empires and civilizations. On the west is the Atlantic from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope. On the east and south are the Suez canal, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. In comparison with Africa, America and Australia are new discoveries. Our oldest traditions and most ancient history are African. The Phoenecians had settled in Syria and Egyptian civilization had begun its wonderful growth long before Abraham left his father's field, and while Europe was yet occupied by wandering tribes of barbarians. Only in recent times are the sources of Egyptian civilization being solved. Its history includes thousands of years before Christ.

        The territory of the dark continent includes 11,500,000 square miles, and lies in about 70° of latitude and about the same of longitude. It is three times larger than all Europe, and about two-thirds the size of both North and South America, and three times as large as the United States. From Cape Bon to Tunis,

on the north, to Cape Agulhas near the Cape of Good Hope, on the south, it is five thousand miles; and from Cape Verde on the west, to Cape Gardafui on the Indian Ocean, in the east, it is 4,500 miles.

        It seems incredible that this continent, so vast in extent and in resources, just south of Europe, and on the highway from Europe to India, more easy of access from Europe than America, and much of its northern border lying on the highway of empire, as it traveled from Asia westward, should have so long been neglected and left in doubt and uncertainty.

        This fact is emphasized when we remember what has been accomplished in comparatively few years in America and Australia. Only four hundred years ago Columbus accidentally run on the shores of this western world, with its sixteen millions of square miles of territory. There were probably four millions of aborigines in North and South America, and of these, perhaps half a million were in North America. These aborgines were the remnants of civilizations of whose origin we have no data. What marvelous changes have come in four brief centuries! Those remnants of civilization have disappeared and those copper colored barbarians are exterminated or without influence, and one hundred and thirty millions of people of European origin or descent have spread over this vast territory. In the United States alone are fifty-five millions of white people, and in Canada, just to the north, are nearly four millions more. And what prodigious advances in art, science, literature, agriculture, manufacturing and in moral activities! And again, what wonderful results in the extension of American influence in all the world, in business, diplomacy, education and missionary enterprises.

        Australia gives another remarkable contrast. Only a hundred years ago the first convict settlement was made in New South Wales. Half a million of the lowest type of humanity were scattered over this domain, which is about as large as the United States or Europe. It is only about fifty years since the real transformation began. The result is wonderful. That half million of savage people have given place to three million whites, mostly of British origin and the annual trade amounts to $600,000,000.

        On the other hand, Africa, with a population estimated at from one hundred and fifty to two hundred millions, one-ninth of the world's population, with ancient and at times powerful settlements on its northern borders, with both its coast lines known to the most powerful and populous nations, has remained until recent times, practically unknown. Its people, century after century, have continued to babble their one hundred and fifty languages and to live and die in the midst of their vast natural domain unreached by the thought or inspiration of the great world without.

        And what adds pathos to this remarkable picture, is the fact that all other races united in a determination not to enslave each other, but to combine in the enslavement of the African. There are about thirty millions of Africa's sons and daughters in North and South America, the inheritance chiefly of slavery, and the descendants of freedmen. It is estimated that up to 1860 during three hundred and sixty years, fifteen millions of Africa's sons and daughters have been carried to America and Europe as slaves. It is also estimated that for every slave delivered into bondage the life of another African was sacrificed, so that thirty millions of these barbarous people have

been murdered or sold into slavery, as the result of the accursed traffic in which, until within a few years, every Christian nation on earth had a part!

        Bishop William Taylor tells that in one of his missionary tours along one of the many highways for centuties made bloody and horrible by the dying victims of the slave-trade,he lay at night on the ground trying to sleep. The moon shone brightly, and as the scenes of murder and cruelty which had been enacted on the spot where he lay came to mind, voices seemed to come out of the ground and cry to him: "O! man of God, why have you been so long coming?" So to-day may we not think of the aching heart of Africa crying out to the civilized world: "Oh! brothers, why have you been so long coming?"

        When and by whom was the dividing of the Dark Continent begun? Whether Egyptian civilization, which began thousands of years before Christ, was indigenous or came from Asia, we do not know. Owing to Egypt's prehistoric origin, we cannot consider her people in the question before us.

        The first foreign people to establish a colony and acquire territory on the northern coast of Africa were the Phoenicians, eleven hundred years before Christ. The Phoenicians were a wonderful people, occupying a little strip of land two hundred miles long and ten miles wide on the east end of the Mediterranean. Tyre and Sidon were their great cities They gave the world the alphabet and the science of numbers, and to Europe its first impulse toward civilization. They were great colonizers. They were darker skinned than the other Syrians, and were the sons of Ham.

        The Greeks, sixty-three years before Christ, made the first European settlement in Africa. Cyreniaca, as the region was called, came to be a place of commerce, travel and pleasure-seeking for the active, cultured Greeks.

        Later on, all northern Africa fell under the Roman sway.

        How much was known of the Dark Continent early in the Christian era, is indicated by a map made by Ptolemy, the famous Alexandrian astronomer who flourished one hundred and forty years after Christ. Six hundred years before, Herodotus had given a summary of what the world knew of Africa. During that time the whole world had grown larger. Still the knowledge of the Dark Continent was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and down a few hundred miles on the east and west coasts. The continent itself was untouched.

        The Sahara Desert was a tremendous barrier to movements southward. Egypt, in the height of her greatness, was more concerned about Asia than Africa. The camel had not yet come into general use as a means of travel and burden-bearing. Nearly all Europe and Asia were open to choice, and besides the native tribes resisted the encroachments of their neighbors. It is reported that the Phoenicians, six hundred and ten years before Christ, circumnavigated the continent, going down the Red Sea, round the Cape of Good Hope, up the west coast, and entered the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules.

        It is interesting here to note that there are those who claim that the discovered ruins of ancient cities, forts, mines, etc., and the testimony of the earliest travelers, demonstrate that in different parts of the Dark Continent there were in ancient times large centers of civilized people who, overwhelmed by

the surrounding barbarous nations, or yielding to the inevitable tendencies of human nature, lapsed into decay. It is now, for example, considered fairly certain that the land of Ophir, where the ships of Solomon and his friend, Hiram of Tyre, went once in three years to bring back gold and precious stones and other merchandise, was in the vicinity of Zambesi, far down on the eastern coast of Africa. The recent opening of the gold-producing countries south of Zambesi--Mashonoland and Manica--and the evidences of ancient mines found there, have served to confirm many in the opinion that the Ophir of the Bible was not in Arabia but in Africa. It now looks as if Africa would lead the nations of the world in the production of gold. (Last year the yield was $40,000,000, mined almost entirely by Negro laborers).

        I have found one thing to the credit of Nero, the Roman tyrant. Sixty years after Christ, he sent an expedition to explore the source of the Nile. This is the first attempt we have on record of an enterprise which, eighteen hundred years later, our own Stanley completed.

        Following the Roman conquest, the next great effort in dividing the Dark Continent was the invasion of Mohammedanism. For hundreds of years after the Roman conquest and the division of the empire, there was continued fighting along the Mediterranean, interfering with all exploration and new settlements. One episode, however, is worthy of mention. Four hundred and eighty years after Christ, eighty thousand Vandals (men, women and children), crossed from Spain to North Africa. For a hundred years these Teuton people held their own, but finally disappeared from history and blended with other peoples. The time had not come for people of our blood to have a hand in the division of the Dark Continent.

        The Islamic or Arab conquest began 640 years after Christ, and in seventy years Europe was swept out of the Dark Continent and all North Africa was practically Mohammedanized. Wave after wave of Arab immigrants poured in. Cities were built, and great progress made in agriculture, commerce and art. For 750 years this process went on, so that at the close of the fourteenth century Mohammedanism had crossed the Sahara, had a good footing in Soudan, in the Niger region, as well as in Abyssinia and down the East Coast to Sofala, where the Portuguese in the sixteenth century found rich Arab cities. Caravan routes, with the use of camels, were established across the desert. Regular reports and annual pilgrimages to Mecca from different parts promoted knowledge of countries and people. Learning was advanced. At present the Mohammedan University at Cairo is one of the world's great seats of learning. When asked by a traveler what was taught there, the reply was: "We teach God."

        Here, then, we have the first serious division of the Dark Continent. It was from Asia and Mohammedan, and not from Europe. Similarity of climate had much to do with bringing this to pass. Islamism brought with it political organization, some civilization, commercial activity and the establishment of slavery as an institution.

        Europe next comes to the front in the work of exploration and division of Africa in the person of Prince Henry the Navigator, of Portugal. Columbus was born twenty years before, and Luther twenty years after the death of this remarkable man.

        A water route to India, round the Cape of Good Hope, was one of the dreams of that day. Portugal seems to have been providentially prepared for her great work at this time in Africa. In view of her achievements on the Dark Continent, the Pope conferred upon her king the title of "Lord of India." which is attached to the crown to our time. In seventy years Prince Henry and his successors traced the contour of the west, south and east coasts of Africa, initiated the modern European colonization of the continent and began that division which is only now being completed. In 1520, the beginning of the sixteenth century, Portugal was mistress of all the coast of Africa except the Mediterranean and Red seas; forts were built, treaties made with the native tribes, Catholic stations established, and attempts made to convert the natives. But the power of this plucky little kingdom was destined to wane in Africa as well as at home.

        Portugal inaugurated the slave trade. Antonio Gonsalvo brought home some gold dust and ten slaves in 1443. These were probably the first slaves taken from Western Africa by Europeans. They were presented to Pope Martin V., and be conferred on Portugal the right of possession of all countries discovered between Cape Bojado and the Indies. Portugal also had the first of many chartered companies to trade in African gold and slaves.

        While Portugal was practically mistress of Africa during much of the sixteenth century, England, Spain, and France were absorbed in the acquisition of territory in the New Western World. Cortez had conquered Mexico (1520), Magellan had passed the straits bearing his name, the Spaniards had intorduced slaves into the West Indies (1508), Cartier had entered the St. Lawrence (1535), and France began settling Canada (1542), and the year previous DeSoto had been on the Mississippi.

        The world was entering upon a new era. The thirst for gold grew rapidly as the stories of exploration and conquest multiplied. The time for European rivals in Africa had come. The slave trade had already grown to be the chief African traffic. Indians had proved a failure as slaves in America. A few Negro slaves admitted into the West Indies had proved such a success that the traffic had grown enormously. In 1516 Charles V. granted a patent to a Flemish trader to import four thousand slaves annually to the West Indies. The Pope opened a slave market in Lisbon. As early as 1537 it is said ten to twelve thousand slaves were taken there annually, and sent to the West Indies. In 1562 Sir John Hawkins, in spite of the protest of the Queen and many philanthropists, inaugurated the slave trade for England, which later on was chartered by royal authority.

        For one hundred and fifty years, from 1550 to the close of the seventeenth century, one by one, the leading nations of Europe began to get footholds on the African coasts, especially on the west. (England, 1553; France, Holland, 1595; Denmark, and last, Germany, 1681). There came to be sharp rivalries. Later on were conferences and diplomatic congresses, during which Portugal was gradually pushed out, and foundations laid for the permanent division of the contenent.

        The slave trade was the great industry contended for and carried on. In 1748 there were 97,000 slaves carried to America by all nations, and up to that time the total number was probably a million. During the eighteenth century

six millions were carried to America, besides the horrible traffic which was kept up to the coasts of the Mediterranean, to Egypt and to Asia, which had been carried on from time immemorial. It is estimated that the profits of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Dark Continent were equal to that on gold and all other products.

        The eighteenth century was practically a century of stagnation so far as the division of the Dark Continent was concerned. European wars had much to do with this. The great nations were busy with their own interests and the protection and extension of their colonial possessions elsewhere. So far as Africa was concerned, the civilized world united in the awful crimes of devastation and slaughter incident to the slave trade. Toward the close of the century this unspeakable crime against humanity resulted in 200,000 slaves a year being exported, one-half to America and the West Indies and the other half to the East Indies, Egypt and the Mediterranean cities. But during this century the voice of God had begun to speak in thunder tones through such men as Wesley and Wilberforce, in England and elsewhere, and the tide of sentiment against the traffic at the close of the century was powerful and effective. Denmark was the first to forbid the traffic in 1792. The reformation went on, and in 1815 the powers signed a declaration at Vienna, declaring the trade repugnant to humanity and its abolition highly desirable.

        The year 1815 marked a new era in the history of the world, an era destined to have much to do with the Dark Continent. The long Napoleonic wars were over, and the dream of France for supremacy beyond the seas was dissipated at Waterloo. As to Africa, but little change had been made in European possession except in Egypt, where England's diplomacy and money had gained a paramount influence, which continues to grow more and more absolute until the present time. An Egyptian debt of $400,000,000, owned mostly in England, indicates the inevitable, as soon as Turkish power can be ignored, and the jealousy of other European nations appeased. The new era was destined to see a long period of peaceful development throughout the world. In America, our own republic led the way. Undreamed-of results in world-wide prosperity, in invention, learning and moral activities were the result.

        Europe at this time had only a few stations and factories on the coasts, and but little occupation beyond the seaboard. Interior Africa was an unknown blank. There was no real thought of the continent as a whole, as in the case of America or Australia. Germany, in the modern sense, did not exist. France was only awakening to a new desire for colonial expansion. England was busy with the development of Canada, Australia, India and the East, and cared for Africa only as a way station to her Asiatic empire. The nations which had possessions made but little effort to strengthen or extend them. The total commercial value of African trade in 1815, including slaves, was only $150,000,000. The exports were but $65,000,000, and half of this from Egypt and the countries of the Mediterranean.

        For sixty years Africa was to have practical peace, so far as the outside world was concerned. All this, as we see it now, was Providential. It gave opportunity for a period of preparation in Africa herself, and in the thought and conditions of the outside world.

        This period of preparation resulted in great changes both without and within the Dark Continent. In the outside world there was an entire change of sentiment as to the relations a parent country should sustain to her colonies. The question at issue was Imperialism on the one hand and Federation on the other. Imperialism taught that colonies were private properties of the crowns, to be administered for their benefit with but little thought of the colonists themselves. The Federation idea, which came at last to be accepted as the true Imperialistic policy, was that colonists were to be regarded as parts of the whole nation, with rights and privileges and claims for protection and help, the same as the subjects who dwelt under the more immediate shadow of the throne. England had been taught a good lesson in the loss of her American colonies. This growth of right sentiment toward colonists was accelerated also by the increasing independence of thought among the colonists themselves, and also by the need of new fields for occupancy by the crowded populations at the home centers.

        Another matter of world-wide interest and importance affecting Africa in this preparatory period was the gradual suppression of the African slave-trade. So far as that trade with Europe and America was concerned, its destruction was practically reached in 1850. Our own country ended it forty years before. The discussions in public assemblies and in literature, the contests over legislation and in diplomatic circles, all helped to educate the world's conscience concerning the black races, and to develop Christian sentiment and interest toward their continental home.

        After the suppression of the slave-trade in the West, the horrors of the Arab-Asiatic traffic in human souls were brought to light by Livingstone and others. This served to combine philanthropists and statesmen for its destruction, and centered the world's thought anew upon Central Africa. The emancipation of the millions of Africans in our own country during this period had a powerful effect upon the world's thought and conscience concerning black humanity.

        Thus, Providence was preparing the outside world for its final responsibility toward the Dark Continent. The only European nation to gain any new foothold in Africa during that sixty years of preparation was France. She conquered Algeria, and laid the foundation for the future French empire in North west Africa. It has been an expensive purchase to her, costing $750,000,000, and many hundreds of thousands of lives. But the results have been great, and Algeria, soon to be connected by railway across the Sahara desert with Senegal, on the West Coast, 2,500 miles to the South, is destined to be a great country.

        In 1820 the Republic of Liberia was founded under the auspices of the American Colonization Society of the United States. England cared for her interests in the south and elsewhere. Egypt pushed a little farther down the Nile. The Suez canal was built. France was seeking a foothold in Madagascar.

        While this transformation of sentiment and policy were going on among European nations, Africa herself was being prepared. This preparation was the result chiefly of exploration.

        The world needed to know what the Dark Continent really was in extent, in physical resources and possibilities, the location of her mountains and

plateaus, and her lakes and rivers, the nature-of-her climate, and the character of diverse and vast populations.

        How marvelously the answer to these and similar questions went on through those sixty years of preparation. Every European center had its organization of learned men, whose sole purpose was to study Africa. Scores of powerful search-lights were turned on the Dark Continent. Egyptology rose to the rank of a science. Questions of geography, ethnology, history, language and religion as related to Africa, commanded fortunes in money, and the best brain of many of Europe's leading statesmen and scientists. It was an era of exploration and discovery by a long line of heroic men, and a few equally heroic women, such as has never been equalled in numbers or heroism in the exploration of any other continent.

        I cannot attempt to even catalogue their names, much less their deeds. They were God's forerunners opening the way for the nineteenth century to make a new world out of Africa.

        We must, however, pause long enough to mention two names--England's Livingstone, and America's Stanley. The former died alone upon his knees in the heart of the continent for which he gave his life; and his dust, after being carried many hundreds of miles to the seacoast by his faithful black attendants, now sleeps in Westminster Abbey, among England's greatest dead.

        Stanley lives to aid in the work of nation-building in the land he helped discover. His wonderful journey across the continent, and the discovery of the great Congo waterway, may be said to close the period of preparation and to inaugurate the national scramble which was soon to begin.

        From this time on African exploration and occupation came to be a kind of holy crusade. Germany had become interested in the wonderful continent whose rim only was mapped out in the school-days of many now living. Stanley's hunt for Livingstone, and Livingstone's tragic death, had awakened tremendous enthusiasm throughout the civilized world. Missionary enterprises multiplied, and the day for Africa's opportunity hastened.

        The greatest single event preparatory to the final division of the Dark Continent was the founding of the Congo Free State. This was done under the Christian and heroic Leopold of Belgium. He had no children of his own, and it is said he adopted Africa as his child. Stanley was still in the heart of the Dark Continent when, September, 1876, Leopold called a select conference of distinguished geographers and philanthropists to consider the question of an international movement in the interests of African civilization. We need not go through the various steps by which this new State was established. Stanley was Leopold's faithful lieutenant, and gave five years to its organization. The result was the establishment of a Negro Empire, which begins with the mouth of the Congo and extended eastward a thousand miles into the heart of the continent, and reached a thousand miles north and south. Its flag is a field of blue on which shines a single golden star. The United States was the first to recognize that flag as the ensign of a friendly power. This new nation, born in a day, includes 770,000 square miles of territory, and about 15,000,000 of people. Its territory is larger than New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado

and Utah. Its central government is in Belgium and twelve governors-general, over as many districts, represent the home authorities.

        Glorious little Belgium! Or rather, glorious Leopold, in whose Christian and philanthropic soul this marvelous work was begun!

        While the development of the Congo Free State was going on, other nations were looking out for larger possessions on the continent. More or less conflict in opinion and policy resulted. This made necessary the celebrated "Berlin Conference," held in 1884. The first, and perhaps the most important result of this conference was to completely recognize the permanency of the Congo Free State. This new African empire was the pivotal center of friendly international co-operation. A representative was present from the United States.

        The congress opened the Congo, the Niger and the Zambesi, and other rivers to the free trade of the world. It also settled definitely the law of occupation as to territory, and made it necessary for any nation intending to acquire new territory on the continent to notify all the powers represented in the conference.

        We have now reached the culmination of the Providential events leading to the division of the Dark Continent.

        It would be interesting to follow England and France and Germany and Italy and Portugal and the other nations, in their spirit and methods in holding the possessions which they had and in securing more wherever possible. "Influence," as applied to the extension of a nation's power over vast territories, and the German suggestion "Hinterland," or the land beyond, came to be accepted as international doctrines, and the lines of agreement between great sections of territory, extending many hundreds of miles, were fixed.

        But we need not enter into these details. It will suffice to group the permanent results of this Continental scramble, as shown by the latest attainable data. France has the largest slice; namely, three millions of square miles. Her chief African empire is in the Northwest, and extends from Algeria down to Sierra Leone, more than two thousand miles. It includes the largest portion of the Sahara region, the region of the Upper Niger and the valley of the Senegal river. She also has Madagascar and its dependencies.

        England comes next with her more than 2,500,000 square miles, and a late Royal proclamation has added more. British Africa is in three great sections, and are known as British Guinea on the West, British South Africa, and British East Africa. British South Africa extends from Cape Colony, fifteen hundred miles northward, through the center of the continent, touching the Congo Free State. British East Africa begins at Zanzibar, extends northeast to Abyssinia, westward to Congo, and northward to a yet undefined line toward Egypt. That undefined line probably means that when Egypt becomes a Brtish province, the intermediate territory, now in revolt under the Mahdi, will also become British, making a continuous stretch to the Lower Nile, a distance of twenty-five hundred miles.

        Portugal has nearly 900,000 square miles, divided about equally on the southeast and western coasts.

        Germany has about 825,000 square miles in three parts; one on the west near the equator, one on the southwest coast, and one on the east coast,

bounded by the sea on the east, British East Africa on the north, British Central Africa on the south, and the Congo Free State on the west.

        Rejuvenated Italy has about 600,000 square miles along the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the east coast, including Abyssinia.

        Spain has about 215,000 square miles on the West coast, made up largely of the Sahara region.

        In the center, recognized and protected by all, surrounded by the possessions of England, Germany, Portugal, and France, is the great Congo Free State, which, like the golden star on its flag of blue, shines as a star of hope in the midst of the Dark Continent.

        The Turkish section at present includes Egypt and Tripoli, 800,000 square miles, but the grip of that Asiatic power grows less and less upon African soil.

        This leaves unappropriated only about 1,000,000 square miles. The lakes of Africa include about 68,000 square miles.

        We have thus briefly outlined the dividing of the Dark Continent. How quickly it all came to pass when the world and the continent itself, in God's own time, were ready. Three thousand years ago the Phoenecians began to nibble at the great continent on its extreme northern edge. Since then Asia and Europe have been mostly discovered and settled, and America and Australia have been discovered and become seats of vast empires of power and usefulness. And yet, only ten years ago, of the 11,500,000 square miles which make up Africa, not more than 2,500,000 were occupied by European nations and the Boer Republic in the far south. Only the rim of the continent had been touched. To-day nearly the whole has been gobbled up, and all Europe combines to pour in upon the Dark Continent the light and life of Christian civilization. Who can comprehend the results sure to come? Under the protection and leadership of Protestant England and Germany, Republican France and rising Italy, the power of Mohammedanism will be broken, and the Crescent in North Africa will wane before the uplifted Cross; the last vestige of traffic in human souls will be swept away; her rivers and lakes will become highways of commerce; railways will be built along her valleys and across her many plains; instead of slave-gangs and slave-traders' highways of crime and agony, will be the school-house and church and pathways of peace and prosperity; and fetish heathenism among her millions will gradually give way to the worship of the true God.

        But we must not expect results too soon. Great preliminary questions are yet to be settled. The climax now reached in the division of the continent, by which the best thought and civilization of Europe are pledged and enlisted means supreme opportunity for Africa. A general European or Asiatic war would cost Africa a generation of progress. Exploration must be completed; the economic value of the continent must be further tested by actual settlement. Africa has few ocean harbors, and no really great system of lakes like our own, and her large rivers reach the sea with difficulty, and at times over falls, instead of being continental highways to and from the ocean, like the Mississippi, the Columbia or the Amazon. Will systems of railways supply these deficiencies? Africa is essentially a tropical country. The equator passes through the center, and only portions of the north and south ends are

in the temperate zones. No great nations have yet been developed between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Will Africa be an exception? If so, will it be by colonization, or by development of the black races already on the ground. Time will solve these and many other questions. To-day, I repeat, is the hour of Africa's supreme opportunity.

        A siugle concluding remark. The African is a belated race. God sees to it in due time that every section of His family of races has a chance. The sons of Shem had their. They rejected their Lord, and are eliminated from the governing factors of the world.

        The sons of Japheth now rule, and will continue to rule if true to their Lord; denying Him, their power will also pass away. It seems now that the sons of Ham are to have their chance. How soon, or to what extent they are to rule, we know not. We may rest assured, however, that the long ages of heathenism, which have enveloped hundreds of millions of God's children in black, are about ended, and this belated African race will have its opportunity.

                         "Joy to thy savage realms, O Africa!
                         A sign is on thee that the great I AM
                         Shall work new wonders in the land of Ham;
                         And while He tarries for the glorious day
                         To bring again His people, there shall be
                         A remnant left from Cushan to the sea,
                         And though the Ethiop cannot change his skin,
                         Nor bleach the outward stain, he yet shall roll
                         The darkness off that overshades the soul,
                         And wash away the deeper dyes of sin.
                         Princes, submissive to the Gospel sway,
                         Shall come from Egypt; and the Morian's land
                         In holy transport stretch to God its hand;
                         Joy to thy savage realms, O Africa!"

THE PARTITION OF AFRICA

        The following table has been compiled by Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S. The population figures are necessarily in most cases only the roughest estimates:

        

BRITISH AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Gambria	2,700	50,000	19
Sierra Leone	15,000	275,000	18
Gold Coast	46,600	1,905,000	41
Lagos and Yoruba	21,100	3,000,000	142
Niger Territories and Oil Rivers	269,500	17,500,000	65
British Guinea	354,900	22,730,000	64

        

	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
CAPE COLOLY (with Pondo Land and Walvisch Bay)	225,940	1,728,000	8
Basutoland	10,300	219,000	21
Natal	20,460	544,000	22
Zulu and Tonga Lands	9,790	173,000	18
British Bechuanaland	71,430	50,000	0.7
Bechuanaland and Protectorate	99,500	80,000	0.8
Matabili, Mashona, and Nyasa Lands, etc.	524,000	1,600,000	3
British South Africa	961,420	4,394,000	4.6

        

	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
ZANZIBAR (Protectorate, with Northern Ports)	1,040	200,000	192
Ibea, to 6° N. latitude	468,000	6,500,000	14
Rest to Egyptian frontier	745,000	6,000,000	8
Northern Somali Coast	40,000	200,000	5
Sokotra	1,380	10,000	7
British East Africa	1,255,420	12,910,000	10

        

BRITISH AFRICA -- Continent:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Mauritius and Dependencies	1,030	393,000	381
St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha	130	6,500	50
Total British Africa	2,572,900	40,433,500	16

        

FRENCH AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Tunis	44,800	1,500,000	33
Algeria	257,600	3,900,000	15
Sahara	1,550,000	1,100,000	0.7
Senegambia (old professions)	15,000	180,000	12
Gold and Benin Coasts	50,000	600,000	12
Sudan and Guinea (remainder)	525,000	10,000,000	19
French Congo (and Gaboon)	320,000	6,000,000	19
Tajura Bay (Obok and Sibati)	7,700	70,000	9
Madagascar and dependencies	228,000	3,520,000	15
Comoros	760	64,000	84
Reunion	770	165,000	214
Total French Africa	3,000,630	27,099,000	9

        

PORTUGUESE AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Portuguese Guinea	11,600	150,000	13
Angola	517,200	3,500,000	7
Mozambique	310,000	1,500,000	5
Madeira	320	134,000	420
Cape Verde Islands	1,490	111,000	74
St. Thome and Principe	460	21,000	45
Total Portuguese Africa	841,070	5,416,000	6

        

SPANISH AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Tetuan, etc. (Morocco)	30	16,000	530
Sahara (Rio de Ore, etc.)	210,000	100,000	0.5
Canaries	2,940	288,000	98
Gulf of Guinea	800	33,000	41
Total Spanish Africa	213,770	437,000	2

        

GERMAN AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Togoland (Slave Coast)	16,000	1,150,000	72
Cameroons (Kamerun)	130,000	2,600,000	20
Southwest Africa	322,450	117,000	0.2
East Africa (with Mafia)	353,500	2,000,000	6
Total German Africa	821,950	5,867,000	7

        

ITALIAN AFRICA:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
Eritrea	52,000	300,000	6
Abyssinia	195,000	4,500,000	23
Somal Galla, etc	355,300	1,500,000	4
Total Italian Africa	602,000	6,300,000	10

        

SUMMARY:	Area Sq. Miles	Population	Inhabitants to Sq. Mile
British Africa	2,572,900	40,433,500	16
French Africa	3,000,630	27,099,000	9
Portuguese Africa	841,070	5,416,000	6
Spanish Africa	213,770	437,000	2
German Africa	821,950	5,867,000	7
Italian Africa	602,000	6,300,000	10
Congo State (Belgian)	764,000	15,600,000	18
Boer Republics (Swazi Land)	168,120	948,000	6
Liberia	37,000	1,000,000	27
Turkish (Egypt and Tripoli)	836,000	7,980,000	10
Unappropriated	1,486,710	23,919,500	16
Lakes Chad, Victoria, Tanganyika, Nyassa, etc	67,850
Total Africa	11,512,000	135,000,000	12

        Unappropriated Africa includes Morocco (219,000 square miles, 8,000,000 inhabitants), Bornu with Kanem (80,000 square miles, 5,100,000 inhabitants), Wadai (172,000 square miles, 2,000,000 inhabitants), Bagirmi (71,000 square miles, 1,500,000 inhabitants), etc.

FREDERIC PERRY NOBLE
Secretary of the World's Congress on Africa at the Columbian Exposition; Author of "An African Devil-Mission;" "Chautauqua as a New Factor in the American Life:" "Natural Religion Prophetic of Revelation;" "The Missionary Occupation of Africa"

THE
OUTLOOK FOR AFRICAN MISSIONS
IN
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
Epitome of an Essay at the Atlanta Congress on Africa

BY
FREDERIC PERRY NOBLE

SECRETARY
OF
The World-Congress on Africa at the Columbian Exposition
CHICAGO, AUGUST, 1893

AND

AUTHOR OF
An African Devil-Mission; or, The African Slave-Trade of To-Day;
Another Devil-Mission; or, Christendom's African Rum-Traffic;
Captain Great-Heart and the Holy War; or, The Story of the Salvation Army;
Chautauqua as a New Factor in American Life;
Natural Religion Prophetic of Revelation;
AND
THE MISSIONARY-OCCUPATION OF AFRICA: A STORY OF CIVILIZATION

(In Preparation)
[The book now preparing and the present essay have each been separately entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1895 by Frederic Perry Noble in the office of the Librarian of Congress. Washington, D. C. All rights of reproduction, translation and use are without exception reserved by the author].

Copyright, 1895, by Frederic Perry Noble

        After darkness, light! May Atlanta's congress advance Africa's annexation to Christ's kingdom.

PART I.
ANALYSIS OF THE ESSAY.

        Statement of the Divisions of the Subject: Political partition; Religious partition; Non-Statistical results; Reinforcement for missions; Conclusion.

Division A: Political Partition

• The positions of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain
• The position of Britain
• The meaning and outcome of the European position in its bearing on slavery,
• Muhammadanism and missions

Division B: Religious Partition

• The Christian protagonists: Abyssinian, Copt, Greek, Protestant and Roman
• Christian churches and communicants in connection with Anglican (and
  Episcopal), Baptist, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian, Presbyterian,
  Roman and undenominational missions
• Summary of statistics for Protestant and Roman missions

Division C: Non-Statistical Results

• Non-denominational societies and other auxiliaries
• Gains and rising ratios of gain
• Negro Christianity in the Americas
• Its influence on African evangelization thro Baptists, Methodists and other Protestants

Division D: Reinforcements for Missions

• Christian women
• South African Christianity
• Native agency
• New methods or new applications of old ones: evangelism, including education; self-support; industry; medical missions

Conclusion: What shall Christianize Africa?

• Fellowship between Catholics and Protestants; the methods and principles of Krapf and Mackay; the purification of Christendom by Christianity; wealth; prayer; GOD.

PART II.

SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY

Introductory Statement

        Four large facts bear upon the outlook for African missions in the twentieth century. Africa bye-and-large is in the grip of Christendom. Secular agencies as a whole will work to the advantage of religious forces. European powers protect missionaries and sometimes promote missions. The results of Christian missions in Africa now, at the close of the century beginning 1795, surpass what Carey the Baptist, Coke the Methodist, Johnson the Anglican and Moffat the Congregationalist could have dreamed. The Christian womanhood of the United Kingdom and the United States; the British and Dutch Christians of Cape Colony and Natal; and the Negro churches of Africa and the Americas are doubling the force.

Division A: Political Partition

        Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain are making Africa an appanage of Europe. The millions of Negroes inhabiting the Antilles, South America and these southern states endow the western world with African interests. Five of the first-mentioned powers rank as Catholic nations, three as Protestant peoples. The Roman states comprise Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The Protestant powers include Britain, Germany and the United States; but Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland also contribute to the Protestant conquest of Africa. Britain has swarmed into the cardinal coigns of African vantage. She is at the cape and the Zambezi; at the head and mouth of the Nile and the Suez canal; along the Atlantic and the Niger; and on the Indian ocean and the Red sea. The best portions of Africa for men of Saxon stock are in British hands.

        The back-bone of the slave-trade is broken. Europe is actually achieving somewhat toward the suppressal of slaving.

        The partition of Africa is striking the sword from the grasp of Islam. Since 1890 Muhammadanism south of the equator has received such blows that it cannot there lift the heel against Christianity. Between the equator and the tenth degree north, east of Adamawa, Islam is more than ever a waning force. What it may, perhaps, have attained, is merely a military success. Beyond the tenth degree Abyssinia, England in Egypt and France in Berber and Mediterranean Africa prevent the Muslim theocracy from regaining power. The Senusiya and the Saharan and Sudanese Islamites need not be feared. The solidarity and strength of the Muhammadan states of Central Sudan have in the last five years sustained severe shocks. The number of African Muslims has been grossly exaggerated. Instead of numbering one hundred or eighty or sixty millions, they, according to the highest authorities on Africa and especially as to Islam in Africa, number but forty million.

        For the first time in fifteen hundred years Christian missions are to have a fair chance and an open field. Most of the obstacles have now been passed. The crescent sinks. Protestantism moves toward federation. Rome revives. Europe takes Africa seriously in hand. Great Britain and the United States, the two Protestant and Teutonic powers that wield the moral headship of

humanity, are the powers of most influence in the spiritual regeneration of Africa and those most richly endowed for the betterment of her peoples.

Division B: Religious Partition

        In the conflict with Islam and paganism Protestantism and Rome are the spiritual protagonists. The Abyssinian, Egyptian and Greek churches effect practically nothing for the evangelization of Africa. The Greeks (Orthodox) number less than fifty thousand; the Kopts may amount to six hundred thousand; and perhaps the Ethiopic church is three million strong. The Roman communion claims a population in every class numbering one million, two hundred thousand. The Protestants comprise at least one million, five hundred thousand souls. Probably the grand total for Christianity in Africa and the adjacent islands, including the native converts won by missions proper, amounts to five millions, seven hundred and fifty thousand. Against these may be set three hundred thousand Hindus and Sikhs, only four hundred and thirty thousand Jews, forty million Muhammadans (possibly even less), and over one hundred million pagans. But the Abyssinian, Koptic and Russo-Greek church-men in Africa need missionaries. In South Africa Dutch Presbyterianism as a whole is too often a mere form of doctrine. In the Spanish, Portuguese and French possessions, according to Catholic authorities, the Christian character of the colonists connected with the Roman church leaves very much to be desired.

        [Mr. Noble does not deem it advisable or judicious as yet to publish any statistics as to the native churches and native communicants connected at the present day with Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, Non-Denominational, Presbyterian, or Unity of Brethren missions. He is engaging in correspondence with each and every mission-society throughout the world that works among African peoples, in the hope that they will enable him to supplement his tentative estimate with the freshest and most authoritative data as to the religious census of African missions.]

        So far as the statements of the agencies for missions on the continent and the islands permit an approximation toward the number of native communicants, Rome would seem to have two hundred and fifty thousand of these in Africa and the African isles of the sea; and Protestantism as many if not more. Excluding adherents, who presumably number additional hundreds of thousands, the total of native communicants won since 1795 by strictly missionary work in Africa and Madagascar together would appear to be represented to-day by at least five hundred thousand native members of the Christian church in its Latin and Teutonic branches.

Division C: Non-Statistical Results

        Interdenominational, non-denominational or undenominational agencies for African missions are at once an effect and a cause of these activities. Nearly one-third of the non-denominational organizations devote themselves to evangelism pure and simple. The remainder consist of medical mission-societies; of bodies partly philanthropic, partly religious; and of publication-societies whose colporters are missionaries. As representative or typical

auxiliaries to societies for evangelization may be mentioned religious tract societies; Bible societies; associations for free distribution of the Scriptures; international unions of missionaries; associations for planting Sunday-schools abroad; alliances of theological seminaries to promote missions; world-wide leagues of young people in every branch of Christ's church; Christian associations of young men and of young women; and the volunteering of students for service as missionaries. Rising tides of intelligent interest and men and means are coming from these unused reservoirs.

        [Mr. Noble here omits other statistical data as not yet ripe.]

        The Christianizing of the American Negro is another result. Europeans often reproach American Christians with attempting little and accomplishing less for the African. They forget--or ignore--the black Christian of the Antilles, South America and the United States. Merely in the last-named country the Protestant communions alone had two million, six hundred and seventy-three thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven Negro members in 1890. This is ten times as many black communicants as the native church-members connected with Protestant missions in Africa. Moreover, this astounding and stupendous result is the outcome, (except so far as the existence of about five hundred and twenty-five thousand Negro Protestants in 1861 is concerned), of but thirty-three years of effort. Missions among the freedmen of the United States and their children (in one-third of the time that European societies have been active in Africa) have accomplished more than ten times as much.

        The Negro of the United States and the West Indies has already rewarded his Christianizer. The Anglican, Baptist, Basle, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian missions in Africa have enjoyed the services of Negroes from America. Six Negro Baptist, five Negro Methodist, bodies engage in missions among African peoples. The Anglican Negro church of Sierra Leone is the child, grown to independence, of the Church Missionary Society. The British Wesleyans have made their mission in Cape Colony a separate conference. Liberia's Negro Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians have grown into independence. These five organizations of African Negro Christians represent thousands of communicants.

Division D: Reinforcement for Missions

        Christian womanhood, American and European, Catholic and Protestant, exerts itself for Africa, the Antillean Negro and the freedman of the United States. Now that the Muslim or pagan populations of northern and tropical Africa open themselves to woman more and more, she will render yet greater service. The Kaiserswerth deaconess, the Protestant woman-missionary and the Roman nun or sister have an enlarging part in the evangelization of Africans during the twentieth century.

        Colonial Christianity in South Africa constitutes another reinforcement. The Anglican, Congregational, Presbyterian and Wesleyan clergy are no less alert to meet the need of the colored natives than of other men. So are some ministers of the Dutch church in Cape Colony, notably Andrew Murray, and a few individual Boers of Orange State and Transvaal. The religious [?] population

of Cape Colony now numbers over seven hundred thousand, and supports at least sixteen local agencies for missions among African heathen. The Reformed church reports forty native helpers and about four thousand native communicants among its two hundred and six thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven members. The Episcopal communion claims eighty thousand communicants in British South Africa, the Wesleyan church one hundred and eleven thousand members. What might not Cape Colony do for Christian missions between the years 1,900 and 2,000?

        Native agency furnishes another occasion for hopefulness. The native missionary societies of Negro Anglicans in Sierra Leone and Lagos, of the Malagasy Congregationalists and of the Egyptian Presbyterians have already afforded instances of Christian aggressiveness on the part of the Negro Protestant in Africa. If we would save tropical Africa, we must save the Negro of the Antilles, South America and the United States.

        Tho testimony on the whole so far bears against the Negro as a missionary--the fault is not in the race. Time and culture are removing the vices, the infirmities, the difficulties manifested by imperfectly cultured and unripe individuals.

        New applications of old methods form a fourth ground for hope. Evangelization must remain the chief agency for inspiring the African with life. Did not Mackay of U-Ganda, the most all-around, the most finely equipped personality that has yet devoted himself to Africa, write: "Whatever U-Ganda needs, there is at least 'one thing needful'; and any thing we do, if it does not aim at imparting a knowledge of that, and bear right down on it too, will be of comparatively little value"? This, be it remembered, is the testimony of an ideal industrial missionary, who, however, was also much more than a mere industrial missionary^*

        * Mr. Stanley regards Mackay as "the best missionary since Livingstone."

        The self-sustaining missionary, when compelled to resort to farming or trade or hunting or other worldly means of keeping alive, is prevented from fulfiling the real duties of a Christian worker for the Muhammadan or pagan. Apart from the climatic and hygienic difficulties, the fact that such missionaries are regarded as mere self-seekers renders it unlikely that self-support as a method of mission-work will supersede the mission with a salaried staff of men and women sustained by a strong society.

        As yet it seems hardly feasible to attempt to gauge the sphere and to forecast the future of medical missions proper in Africa. Until we obtain data bearing on the entire continent and on all the adjacent islands, it would be wiser to suspend judgment as to the place of medical missions in African evangelization as a whole.

Conclusion: How Evangelize Africa?

        Americans and Europeans may learn from the African. Muhammadan missions afford suggestive hints. The Negro genius can enrich us. White men must set aside all supercilious sense of superiority.

        Protestants, if they wish to enjoy the fullest return from woman's work, will gain more from unmarried women organized than from unmarried women unorganized.

        Rome, if she is to make lasting impression on the tropical African, must adopt the course urged by her representatives in African missions. She must employ Protestant methods.

        Christian missions, as Krapf indicated, must set up series upon series of supporting stations along each of the main axes of Africa; and then, as Mackay urged, must universally utilize the principles and procedure of the normal school, planting this at scores on scores of strategic centers. America and Arabia, as well as Africa itself, should be made recruiting fields for Christianity to secure colored missionaries who shall do for the Arab and Berber and Malagasy and Negro what none but a native can do.

        Christendom needs purifying at the hand of Christianity. Europe and her African colonist, especially (according to Mackay the Scotch Presbyterian) the British inhabitants of Cape Colony, would do well to end their liquor traffic and trade in lethal weapons with the native, the holding of serfs by Christians and the red-handed treatment of aborigines. The United States must do justice to the Negro, or else meet a wrath of God the just that shall be a worse wo than that of 1861-65. When Christians prove strong enough in America and Europe to remove these stones of offence from the paths of African missionaries, Christian missions among African peoples can forge forward with a hundredfold greater speed and sureness.

        The conversion, consecration, crucifixion and surrender of Christian wealth to service would work miracles in the evangelization of Africa and her children.

        The Negro Christian, especially the Negro Baptist and Methodist, needs to wake to his peculiar duty and privilege in regard to Africa and the Negro. If merely the black Baptists and Methodists of the United States, now numbering, say, three millions, would concentrate on missions among Africans and would make a business of training Negro missionaries, this single agency could, humanly speaking, win tropical Africa for our Lord and Master within a century.

        The crowning ground for hopefulness as to the outlook for African missions in the twentieth century is that Christian missions are God's work. The existence of so many native Christians in Africa, of such vast numbers of Negro Christians in the Americas, proves His presence and leadership. It looks now as if the African missions of Protestant churches could enter the twentieth century with twenty-five hundred American and European missionaries on the dark, long-lost continent and its isles; fifteen thousand native mission-workers; and among the communicants a Gideon's band of twenty-five thousand men and women chosen and consecrate. How many more Rome will throw into the conflict for a continent cannot be stated, but her

ideas for the conquest of Africa are sublime. The day when Africa shall yield dominion to Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords may not be imagined, but if we do our part, generation after generation, or, if need be, through centuries on centuries, we may leave results to God.

                         Say not: "The struggle nought availeth,
                         The labor and the wounds are vain,
                         The enemy faints not nor faileth,
                         And as things have been, they remain."

                         If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
                         It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
                         Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
                         And but for you possess the field.

                         For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
                         Seem here no painful inch to gain,
                         Far back, thro creek and inlet making,
                         Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

                         And not by eastern windows only,
                         When daylight comes, comes in the light;
                         In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
                         But west ward -- look! the land is bright.

        532 Washington Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. November, 1895 and January, 1896

JOHN H. SMYTH, LL.D.
Editor of The Reformer, Richmond, Va. for Nine Years
Minister to Liberia

The African in Africa and the African in America

BY
THE HON. J. H. SMYTH, LL.D.
EX-MINISTER TO LIBERIA

        The fact will be readily admitted by those most familiar with the sentiment of a large and not unimportant portion of our American citizenship, who, by the fortunes and misfortunes of war, viewed from the standpoint of one or the other combatants of the sanguinary struggle of 1861-62-63-64, were made equal before the law with all other citizens, that as a class they are averse to the discussion of Africa, when their relationship with that ancient and mysterious land and its races is made the subject of discourse or reflection. The remoteness of Africa from America may be a reason for such feeling; the current opinion in the minds of the Caucasians, whence the American Negroes' opinions are derived, that the African is by nature an inferior man, may be a reason. The illiteracy, poverty, and degradation of the Negro, pure and simple, as known in Christian lands, may be a reason in connection with the partially true and partially false impression that the Negroes, or Africans, are pagan and heathen as a whole, and as a sequence hopelessly degraded beings. These may be some of the reasons that make the subject of Africa discordant and unmusical to our ears. It is amid such embarrassments that the lecturer, the orator, the missionary must present Africa to the Negro in Christian America.

        In view of recent newspaper articles about migration of Negroes to Liberia, so much has been recently said by men of African descent of prominence, and by men of like prominence of uncertain descent, and by men of other races than the Negro, of Liberia and Africa generally, that I deem it a duty as an American citizen and a Negro, in vindication of the men and women of like descent with myself, citizens of the United States, to state some facts explanatory of and in rebuttal of much that has been said, ignorantly, unwisely and unsympathetically, to the detriment of the effort being made at self-government in Liberia, West Africa. The people who constitute the inhabitants and citizenship of Liberia (the largest portion of the latter class are American Negroes from the Southern part of the United States) are possessed of and imbued with the sentiment and the civilization peculiar to this section of our country. That these immigrant Negroes who migrated to West Africa, or began migration as far back as 1820, and who continue to go thither, have a better field there, with less embarrassing environment, to prove their capacity for self-government, for leadership in State-craft than their brethren in the northern, western and southern portions of the United States, will scarcely be seriously denied or questioned. This conceded, it seems to me that wisdom, self-respect, race loyalty, and American patriotism would show themselves richer to

withhold judgment as to the success of the experiment being made in Africa for self-government until such time as this immigrant people and their descendants have lived in Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, the Camaroons and other parts of West Africa long enough to assimilate the sentiment of liberty and rule, the general heritage and possession of the native African, than it has shown itself in echoing the expression of opinion of white men, whatever their learning or literary capacity, who estimate the progress of the Negro by the standard of their own race with its superior opportunities, advantages and facilities.

        Until we have demonstrated ability for organization, for government, and have shown effective cohesiveness and leadership here in the United States, it may be a little immodest to hastily and unadvisedly make up the record adverse to our immediate kith and kin, who less than sixty years ago made the first step on lines of independent form of government of themselves, and have successfully maintained themselves against the greed of Spain, the aggrandizement of France, and the envy and cupidity of the merchant class of England without active assistance or defense of our formidable North African squadron; without an army and without more than one gunboat, the property of the Republic.

        Liberia is the only democratic republican form of government on the continent of Africa of which we have any knowledge. The civilization of the people constituting the majority of the citizenship o fLiberia is American. It embraces that phase of our American system which has made the autonomy of the south distinct from that of all other parts of our common country. This is the resultant of the outgrowth of the laws and customs of the severalty as well as the jointness of that system of government which exists in the South. In so far as the civilization of the United States on analysis is differentiated as northern, southern, eastern, and western, and in the south as Virginian, Carolinian, Georgian, it may be said, that the people composing the nation have transferred such American phases of government to this part of Africa.

        The pioneers of this colony, the descendants of them, and the immigrants that have gone from here at varying periods of time within sixty years, like those of us who have remained, have been the unhappy victims of the influences of an alien, racial oppression; are fragments of races and tribes, and lack much in capacity for maintaining a stable form of government without the aid which comes from the moral support of the United States. But notwithstanding the embarrassments and difficulties of this youthful nation, the elements of success are being gradually, surely and deeply laid in industrial and agricultural concerns. The masses of the people are directing their effort to agriculture, the development of the soil, and are leaving the matter of coast-commerce or barter to the few.

        No epitome or summary of Liberia would be worthy of the name which failed to take note of the renaissance of education under the scholarly Blyden and Freeman, both of whom have been presidents of Liberia College. When the former scholar came to the presidency of the college, then was commenced the work of the adaptation of the training of the youth for the

definitive and distinct purpose of advancing the nation on the line of race. This institution has sent forth strong Negro men, who are unperverted in their instincts, strong in their race loyalty, and unhampered by a civilization upon which the individuality of the race is not stamped. Such a civilization, unmodified, is unsuited to the African in Africa, or out of Africa and although it may develop him religiously, in manly, self-reliant feeling, it will make him a weakling and will be destructive of true manhood, self-respect and race integrity. In illustration of the method of training the mind of the Negro youth of Liberia, the following from the inaugural of the late president of the college, Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, on assuming the presidency, will make clear Liberian higher training. After alluding to the leading epochs in the history of civilization, the theocratic, the Greek age, the mediæval age, the modern age and its subdivisions, the age since the French Revolution, the distinguished president said of the curriculum of the college: "We shall permit in our curriculum the unrestricted study of the first four epochs, but especially the second, third, and fourth epochs, from which the present civilization of Western Europe is mainly derived. There has been no period of history more full of suggestive energy, both physical and intellectual, than these epochs. Modern Europe boasts of its period of intellectual activity, but none can equal, for life and freshness, the Greek and Roman prime. No modern writers will ever influence the destiny of the race to the same extent that the Greeks and the Romans have done. We can afford then to exclude them as subjects of study, at least in the earlier college years, the events of the fifth and sixth epochs, and the works which in large numbers have been written during these epochs. I know that during these periods some of the greatest works of human genius have been composed. I know that Shakespeare and Milton, Gibbon and Macaulay, Hallam and Lecky, Froude, Stubbs, and Green, belong to these periods. It is not in my power, even if I had the will, to disparage the works of these masters; but what I wish to say is, that these are not works on which the mind of the youthful African should be trained.

        "It was during the sixth period that the transatlantic slave trade arose, and these theories--theological, social, and political--were invented for the degradation and proscription of the Negro. This epoch continues to this day, and has an abundant literature and a prolific authorship. It has produced that whole tribe of declamatory Negrophobists, whose views, in spite of their emptiness and impertinence, are having their effect upon the ephemeral literature of the day, a literature which is shaping the life of the Negro in Christian lands. His whole theory of life, quite contrary to what his nature intends, is being influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by the general conceptions of his race entertained by the manufacturers of this literature, a great portion of which, made for to-day, will not survive the next generation.

        I admit that in this period there have been able defenses of the race written, but they have all been in the patronizing or apologetic tone, in spirit of that good-natured man who assured the world that

                         'Fleecy locks and dark complexion
                         Cannot forfeit nature's claim.'

        "Poor Phillis Wheatly, a native of Africa, educated in America, in her attempts at poetry, is made to say, in what her biographer calls 'spirited lines,'

'Remember, Christian Negroes, black as Cain, may be refined, and join the angelic train.' The arguments of Wilberforce, the eloquence of Wendell Phillips, the pathos of Uncle Tom's Cabin, are all in the same strain, that Negroes have souls to save as white men have, and that the strength of nature's claim is not impaired by their complexion and hair.

        "We surelycannot indulge with the same feelings of exultation that the Englishman or American experiences in the proud boast that we speak the language that Shakespeare spoke. The faith and morals which Milton held, for that "language" in some of its finest utterances patronizes and apologizes for us, and that "faith" has been hitherto powerless to save us from proscription and insult. It is true that culture is one, and the effects of true culture are the same; but the native capacities of mankind differ, and their work and destiny differ, so that the road by which one man may attain to the highest efficiency is not that which would conduce to the success of another. The special road that has led to the success and elevation of the Anglo-Saxon is not that which would lead to the success and elevation of the Negro, though we shall resort to the same means of general culture which enabled the Anglo-Saxon to find out for himself the way in which he ought to go."

        But to return. It was not the privilege of ancient foreign civilization to know Africa except superficially, and with equal truth it may be asserted that the world of foreign races to Africa is ignorant of Africa now, and always has been as to her races, although millions of her sons and daughters, and their million descendants, have been placed in most intimate and unfortunate relation with many great and remarkable alien races.

        This absence of knowledge concerning a continent so related as Africa has been to the past and present of European and American nations, may be accounted for in the selfishness of man's nature, the disposition to concern one's self, to the exclusion and the neglect of others, with racial characteristics which create an interest in those of a race for that race alone, which produces pride of race, a possession of every race, unless destroyed by oppression, which produces indifference to other races than one's own, save in so far as others may be made to conserve the interest of one's own race.

        The continent of Africa is to-day the most interesting of the eastern hemisphere to the scientist, the political economist, the philanthropist and the religious propagandist, and the plunderers of weak and defenseless humanity. It will not be possible for me to speak of the races of the whole continent. My purpose is to speak of Africa in America and Africa in Africa, confining myself to a portion of the races of West and Central Africa, for the purpose of arousing an active spirit of inquiry as to a continent and a people, to which we are bound by the blood that courses our veins and by whatever of self-respect we possess.

        We are taught by holy writ that God set bounds to the habitations of men. One race he established upon the continent of Africa, another upon the continent of Asia, another upon the continent of Europe, and a heterogeneity of races upon the continent of America, and fragmentary peoples inhabit the isles of the sea. In this various apportionment of races, wisdom and beneficence are shown. If we fail to see the former, we cannot doubt the latter, since "He does all things well."

        In the light of these facts I fail to see a providence in bringing the Negro here, in making of him, at best, a moral and mental imitation of an original such as he can never be. Every step made by the Negro and his progeny, brought here a man and trained a slave, has continued him slave, though the institution as such has perished. The inherited taint of the institution has removed him further and further from the land of his fathers, from his tribal and racial traditions (valued heritages of a people), and has tended to make latent in him, if it has not wholly destroyed his best racial peculiarities and characteristics. In making us Anglo-Saxons by environment, we have lost not only in soul, but exteriorly, as objectified in the various types among us, nomenclatured colored people. However distasteful to the Caucasian the statement of the fact may be, the Negro who has grown to manhood under their alien Christian civilization, alien to the Negro and [in many respects] to Christ, is in his virtues and vices more Caucasian than African.

        These considerations are serious to the Negro who feels any pride in being connected with races which aggregate, as known, more than 200,000,000 souls, who have an inalienable right to a continent as rich in its flora and fauna and mineral deposits (to say the least) as any other the sun warms with its heat and upon which the rains descend to make fruitful. Serious, indeed, must these considerations be to the Negro of the Americas and the Antilles, the descendants of those races whose moral elevation and mental ripeness in the morning of time manifested themselves in the conception and execution of those wonders of the ages, the pyramids, the sphynxes, and that musical colossus, Black Memnon, so fashioned that for two hundred years, on the rising of the god of day, as its rays shone upon it, it became musical with the concord of sweet sounds. Serious must these considerations be to the descendants of those races who erected these most beautiful temples and obelisks which have existed for centuries, the superscriptions within and upon which are yet to be interpreted by the descendants of Negro architects and builders; the ruins of which, in their moral sublimity, stand as sentinels of time all along the delta and banks of the Nile, and are seen at Alexandria, Philæ, Elephantiné, Thebes and Karnac, representing their builders feeling after God in their desire for immortality.

        These works of art and utility survive, in ruins, the perished civilizations of Asia, the cradle of the human race, and will survive the civilizations of Europe and this last, vigorous, Herculean civilization of America, which is but an evolution of Europe. These ruins have been the surprise and admiration of all other civilizations. These ruins have seen other civilizations in their dawn, their noontide, and will, notwithstanding the vandalism of the Caucasian, continue beyond his day. Those perished peoples of Africa furnished Europe with letters, sciences, and arts, although we, their lineal heirs, by the selfishness, greed, and ingratitude of the Caucasian, have been denied, until within the century, the title of human beings, and within three decades have-only been regarded as equals before the law in a land of liberty and law. Two hundred and fifty years have removed us to a far greater distance from Africa than the geographical measurement that separates America from Africa, and to-day that continent is perhaps of less interest to the educated and refined

Negro of America than to his thrifty, industrious, and adventurous white fellow-citizen.

        There is error in a system of religion, a mistake in a system of education that so alienates brother from brother and sister from sister. Especially is this so when they trace their lineage from the same race stock.

        It is lamentable that two hundred and fifty years have removed us to a far greater distance from Africa than the geographical measurement which separates America from Africa, and to-day that continent is perhaps of less interest to the educated and refined Negro of America than to his thrifty, industrious, and adventurous white fellow-citizen.

        Says an eminent English divine: "Neither Greek nor Roman culture had power to spread beyond themselves, and we have the testimony of the Emperor Julian to this. He considered the barbarous western nations incapable of culture. The fact was that Rome did not try to civilize in the right way. Instead of drawing forth the native energies of these nations, while it left them free to develop their own national peculiarities in their own way, it imposed on them from without the Roman education. It tried to turn them into Romans. Where this effort was unsuccessful, the men remained barbarous; where it was successful, the nation lost its distinctive elements in the Roman elements, at least until after some centuries the overwhelming influence of Rome had perished. Meantime they were not Britons nor Gauls, but spurious Romans. The natural growth of the people was arrested. Men living out of their native element became stunted and spiritless."

        The peculiar character of a nation is not lost in Christianity, but, so far as it is good, develops and intensifies itself. People should be allowed to grow naturally into their distinctive type and place in the world.

        The wrong done us here in America, the wrong done us in Turkey in Asia, and Turkey in Europe, and Constantinople, is being recognized at the center of Anglo-Saxon civilization, as is honestly indicated by utterances such as these: "It is too late to ask, 'Are we our brother's keeper?' Three centuries ago the plea might have seemed specious, but since then Europe has made itself guilty towards Africa of the blackest series of crimes that stain the foul record of civilized history. The actual appalling state of things in Africa is the result of the policy of Europe towards the African races. European contact has brought in its train not merely the sacrifice, amid unspeakable horrors, of the lives and liberties of twenty million Negroes for the American market alone, but political disintegration, social anarchy, moral and physical debasement, the decay of the simple arts and industries which had been developed during centuries of undisturbed and uneventful existence. Christian Europe, it is true, no longer openly tolerates the slave trade, but Christian Europe furnishes the arms by means of which the slave trade is carried on. The European explorer paves the way for the Arab man-hunter; in his track follow not the blessings of civilization, but conflagration, rapine, and murder, and European trade, while extinguishing native handicrafts, places within the African's grasp the power of self-destruction by spirits and of mutual destruction by firearms.

        "We are now consciously confronted by all these evils and responsibilities. They have been slowly forced upon our recognition as one traveler after

another opened a chink into the darkness of the heart of Africa. That a debt of reparation is due from the white man to the black can no longer be denied. It must be paid somehow; it may be paid for weal and not for woe. A duty left undone is a Nemesis, pursuing to destruction; a duty to be done is simply a problem to be solved. Which shall it be for us? The public voice has already spoken. The blunder and the crime of the abandonment of Khartum will not be repeated. Henceforth, at least ostensibly, the salvation of Africa is the policy of Europe.

        "There remains, then, only the question as to the best means of carrying it into execution. And here, too, ignorance is giving place to better knowledge. Our conduct is, as it were, shaping itself, and for once commercial and national advantages are found combined with the highest interest of humanity."

        I am aware that it will be insisted by some who have failed to give this matter the consideration which it merits, that we are a part of the greatest composite nationality, and therefore, any influence that would make the Negro less American and more African than he is, would be injurious to the best interest of our American nation. I would gladly impress upon persons entertaining such thoughts, that race allegiance is compatible with patriotism, with love of the land that gave us birth. This has been abundantly shown to be true with reference to the Jews. Whatever doubts may be entertained upon this point on account of their wide religious divergence from other religionists, must undergo a change in the presence of the admonition given in a missive sent to Israel by the prophet Jeremiah, and which has been faithfully conformed to by Israel and the descendants of Israel: "Serve the King of Babylon, and live. Build ye houses and dwell in them; and plant gardens and eat the fruits of them. And seek the welfare of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace."

        Though we are a part of this great national whole, we are a distinct and separate part, an alien part racially, and destined to be so by the immutable law of race pride, which is possessed by our white fellow-citizens, if not by us. The sentiment, the something stronger than sentiment which makes an English American proud of his connection with Britain, a French American proud of his connection with La Belle France, and a German American fondly attached to the memories of the fatherland, and all European races of their Aryan descent, has something that partakes of the moral sublime. Truly "language and religion do not make a race."

        The characteristics, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies and habits have been determined by what has been displayed and noted of Negroes under influences foreign to them and beyond their control. This has been the cause of inaccurate knowledge of the races of Africa on the part of the whites, and inaccurate knowledge on the part of the Negroes themselves.

        The elements of character of American whites are to be learned in the light of their free, unhampered ancestry and brethren in Europe.

        The civilized Negro here has but recently emerged from slavery and been recognized a freeman; and though guaranteed in the possession of political rights, is still hampered by his inability to understand himself, by the conviction that on account of the political unity of the races here, his end must be reached by pursuit of the same line followed by the controlling races.

        The condition of the race past and present here makes the American Negro African, without the peculiarities of his race; an African only as to the hue of his skin and his blood. The black man here is Americanized, and as a sequence, sectionalized.

        Now the difference between Africa in America, and Africa in Africa being recognized, let us look to Africa in Africa. The races of Africa have not been a subject of Caucasian study.

        The Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Moorish people are imperfectly known, and the interior, eastern, western races, are still more imperfectly understood, and for very prudential reasons,--the uncompromising conditions of climate toward European peoples, and the almost insuperable difficulties of ingress to the country. Says Amelia B. Edwards, in her cleverly written book, "A Thousand Miles up the Nile," of African races: "As with these fragments of the old tongue, so with the races, subdued again and again by invading hordes; intermixed for centuries together with Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab blood, it fuses these heterogeneous elements in one common mould, reverts persistently to the early type, and remains African to the last. So strange is the tyranny of natural forces. The sun and soil of Africa demand one special breed of men, and will tolerate no other. Foreign residents cannot rear children in the country. In the Isthmus of Suez, which is considered the healthiest part of Egypt, an alien population of twenty thousand persons failed in the course of ten years to rear one infant born upon the soil. Children of an alien father and an Egyptian mother will die off in the same way in early infancy, unless brought up in simple native fashion. And it is affirmed of the descendants of mixed marriages, that after the third generation the foreign blood seems to be eliminated, while the traits of the race are restored in their original purity."

        Another reason, race pride, so natural to all races, will always be a good and sufficient reason to deter the Saxon from recognizing excellences in a race foreign and alien to his race. Now, if we would know the Negro in his African home, we are to seek that knowledge of his true character through him.

        The testimony of Africans, distinguished for their knowledge of their countrymen, for their learning and character, should be looked to, and consulted as authorities in these matters. The Arku and Ebo races are not to be known through the flippant and inconsiderate statements of some ignorant European who finds to his surprise and annoyance that he cannot successfully take advantage of them in a business transaction, and as a consequence declares the former people a deceptive, ignorant class, and the latter an insolent, lazy set. You are to read the history of these races in the light of what the learned Dr. Africanus Horton has written in his "Africa and

the Africans," and what his lordship Bishop Crowther experienced in his successful labor of love among his own and other races.

        A comprehensive knowledge of the Christian, Mohammedan, and heathen Africans of Central and West Africa must be read in the light of the full and exhaustive information to be found in the writings of Edward W. Blyden, D.D., LL.D., late president of Liberia's college. Christianity in the third and fourth centuries among the Africans must be studied, in the Africans' fathers, and in Lloyd's North African Church and in Abyssinian traditions.

        The missionary work in West Africa in the fifteenth century may be read in the voluminous Spanish and Portuguese and Italian state papers and travels. A few most valuable ones as to the Congo races are to be found in an English translation made during the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. Bishops Crowther and Colenso may be read on African character with profit. There are two classics, African, which should be read: A. H. L. Heeren, African Researches, and a portion of Herodotus.

        For quite fair treatment of African character, French and German explorations are interesting, and in English, Mungo Park, Livingstone, and Gordon Pasha.

        Having directed attention to the means and some of the sources to be relied on for facts concerning native African character, I now point to some illustrations of error and wrong in dealing with the African in Africa.

        It is not to our century alone that we are to look for active but mistaken effort to christianize Africa. There has existed no African mission, which, in the same period of time, attained to such proportions as the Portuguese mission in the Congo region during the fifteenth century. A cathedral and churches adorned, beautified, and glorified that portion of West Africa, and a Congo gentleman, after pursuing the necessary course of study in Spain prescribed for the priesthood, was made a bishop, and returned to his country to carry on the work of christianizing his people through the religion of Catholic Rome. All this work passed away. The ships which brought priests as outward passengers took the human product of the race back as homeward cargo. The theory and practice of the European being in opposition, the one to the other, the work perished. The fetich of the cross in the hands of the Portuguese, did not deter them from knavery and theft and murder, and the Congoes concluded that their fetiches were less harmful than the alien Portuguese.

        Africans cannot be influenced by aliens, who, however Christian, seek to subvert their manhood. With the African at home, service to God and service to his fetich will not be yielded if manhood be the sacrifice.

        He may be forced to accept a dogma or a religion, but will not receive either under such circumstances. Alien races can aid the progress of Christianity and civilization among Africans, but cannot control it with hope of ultimate success in Africa. Mr. Venn would have probably ranked, as the chief work of his official life, his careful and prolonged labors for the organization of native churches. All his measures converged to this point, the formation wherever the Gospel was proclaimed, of a native church, which should gradually be enfranchised from all supervision by a foreign body, and should become, in his phraseology, "self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending." He carefully discriminated between missionary: work carried

on by foreigners and Christianity acclimated and so become indigenous in a national church. The one was the means, the other the end; the one the scaffolding, the other the building it leaves behind when the scaffolding is removed; the one subject to constant changes and modifications, as fresh circumstances develop themselves, the other growing up to the measure of the stature of the perfect man, only changing by gradually putting away childish things and reliance on external help and control.

        In the British colony of Sierra Leone opportunity is afforded to study native character, as at no other place with which I am acquainted. The representatives of not less than a hundred tribes may be seen here and of not a few races. Here one may see the stately and grave Mandingo, the diplomatic Soosoo, the frail but handsome Foulah, and the paragon of men, the magnificent Jollof, "his complexion free from any taint of Abyssinian blue or Nubian bronze, intensely, lustrously, magnificently black."

        Of the foregoing races there has been no acceptance of anything of foreign civilization. These races represent a very high and unique type of Mohammedanism and Arabic training. They have adopted the religion of the Prophet and made it to conform to themselves. They have written their own commentaries on the sacred book. They are not controlled by the Arab, the Persian, or the Turk as to their conception of the Koran. Their women share in common with the men in the instructions of the masters. But there are two distinct races here, and some of each of them in Liberia, the Ebo and Arku races, among whom is displayed the highest type of English civilization, with their free, unhampered peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. These two races control and direct commercial interest in Sierra Leone, on the Gold coast and at Lagos, and have brought peace to war and order from confusion in the independent Negro nations of Abbeokuta.

        Among these races, in religion are the Crowthers; in medical and surgical science, the Davises and Hortons; in jurisprudence, the Lewises and McCarthys; in pure scholarship, the Blydens, Coles, and Quakers; in the mercantile profession, the Boyles, Williams, Grants, and Sawyers. The time was when these two races were opposed to each other, but happily much of the tribal hatred has been destroyed by contact and education. These people are distinct in their bent of character. The Arku race is marked by a suavity of manner, a disposition to please, which borders on obsequiousness, and are industrious. They live upon a very little that they may save very much. They are never found to be improvident. The women make most affectionate wives, and have no peers in the world in their disposition to prove themselves helpmeets. It is said that the refusal by a husband to allow an Arku wife to help him, not infrequently causes marital difficulties. She prefers to trade than to remain indoors attending to her domestic affairs and babies. In complexion this race represents the average dark complexion of the American Negro.

        The Ebo is a proud, daring race. They are always industrious, are found of display, and in their hospitality are ostentatious. It may be asserted that there exists no evidence to show these people ever to have been pagan, in their home on the Niger or elsewhere. As a race they have never received either Christianity or Mohammedanism, but claim to believe sincerely in God.

Those in the British colony have assimilated Christianity and some have attained to the highest culture and refinement. The first Negro graduate of Oxford was an Ebo. The most distinguished physician--Negro physician--living up to 1884 was Dr. Horton, an Ebo. The knowledge of reading and writing and ciphering, in short, rudimentary training in this colony, has been very thorough. To Wilberforce and Venn be lasting honor and praise for their effective work in the British colonies of West Africa.

        The entire coasts of this continent are surrounded by and permeated with a deadly malaria which makes Africa feared. In the future there will be cause for, and there will be much rejoicing that an Almighty wisdom has made the coasts generally alluvial, and has given a few broad and possibly navigable high ways to the interior, the banks of which are charnel houses to aliens.

        The aboriginal tribes and races subject to Liberia, excepting the American Liberians, are estimated at three-fourths of a million souls. The principal races here are Mandingos, Kru and Graybo and Bassa people, cognate races; Veys, Golas and Pesseys. My contact has been with these races in the civilized settlements, and in their own towns and villages. It would be a task to describe them with the accuracy their tribal and racial differences merit.

        The Mandingos are a Mohammedan, proselytizing race, strictly sober, industrious, intellectual and sincere, serious men. Their women are handsome and models of chastity. The English explorer, Winwood Reed, in his Savage Africa pays them this compliment reluctantly. Marriages rarely occur between women of this race and Christians or pagans. The Kru race, evidently a central African people, occupy that portion of country lying between Grand Bassa and Cape Palmas, and are to be seen on every ship from Sierra. Leone to Congo river. To West African commerce he is an indispensable factor, since European sailors cannot work the cargo of a ship south of nor in the port of Freetown. This race is divided into two classes, mariners and agriculturists, the latter being typical landsmen in ignorance of the sea. The sailor class, like their class among the Caucasians, are simple-hearted, improvident, and are devotedly attached to their families. Wherever found, these men may be recognized, the identification being an India ink mark extending from the root of the nose to the hair, and an arrow-shaped mark from the ear tending toward the center of the cheek. They have much cunning in their nature, are not wanting in courage, are marked for endurance and industry as laborers, but so far as training in books has been carried on among them, they have shown themselves possessed of ordinary intellectual ability.

        To the Kru race the two Americas are chiefly indebted for the catching and embarking of Africans upon slave ships. It is currently reported and generally believed these people have never themselves been enslaved. The Spaniards, Portuguese, English, and American pirates, in the interest of the nefarious slave traffic, gave them immunity from capture and slavery for the invaluable service they rendered their bad cause. Strange as it may seem, they are said never to have held slaves, nor do they to-day hold slaves, and will not keep one as a slave in their household. A slave may be adopted in a Kru family, may intermarry with the race as a freeman, but not as a slave. Physically,

they are a very superior race of men and women. The Greyboes resemble in appearance the Krues, with the exception of a lighter complexion, being a dark reddish brown, and are dissimilar in being more intellectual than the Krues. They have the scriptures, and other books of their history and traditions, written in Roman characters in their own tongue. The guttural sound of the Dutch language is peculiar to both the Kru and Greybo languages. Intellectually, the Greyboes are a very remarkable people. The most eminent surgeon Liberia ever had was of this race; so also the first Hebrew scholar. They are a warrior race, powerful in stature, very brave, and marked for their courage, as the Americo-Liberian's experience attests. They have their own representatives in the Legislature. The Bassas are inferior to the Greyboes, and in some respects not the equals of the Krues. Notwithstanding this fact, they have produced soldiers of no mean order, and assimilate the Christian civilization about them as readily as the Americo-Liberian acquires their language.

        In this matter I am reminded of the very great importance of the native languages as a valuable auxiliary in the spread and extension of civilization among African races. To use the terse language of his lordship, Bishop Crowther, "men think accurately in their own tongue."

        The Golas as a race are courageous and intrepid, and kindly in their relation with the Americo-Liberian, preferring peace with them to war. The Pesseys, once a martial race, have by internal dissension and wars with other races, to an alarming extent lost their independence and many of that once noble race have been made captives to other peoples and slaves. As slaves they are highly valued, being indefatigable laborers, and therefore admired bondsmen by their masters. Their language has the softness and liquid sweetness of Italian, being in striking contrast to the harshness of the Kru and Greybo tongue.

        Now I approach the consideration briefly of a people little known to the explorer of Central or Western Africa, though unquestionably a Central African people, but destined to be, should they prove as numorous as supposed, one of the first races of the continent, the Veys. Complexionally, this race is black and brown, the women of which are distinguished for facial beauty, and the symmetry of physical proportion, while the men are not wanting in elegance and strength of physique. They have grace in carriage, and in language there is a sweetness and harmony in utterance that reminds one of what music is. They have wonderful address, great tact, and the women possess the airs, graces and fineness which are attributed to the women of France.

        The Veys do not display industry in manual labor to the extent of other races. They prefer those callings and employments which require the smallest amount of physical exertion. Notwithstanding this fact, there are blacksmiths, cloth weavers and skillful workmen in silver and gold, but the majority of them are mercantile in their tastes and pursuits, and are, therefore, traders.

        This race is highly intellectual. As a semi-civilized people they claim the first importance among the West African and Negritian races. The acquired philological capability of the Veys is not traceable to any ulterior influences,

but is from within. Domestic slavery exists among them, and their laws are not unlike those of ancient Rome and old Saxon enactments and customs. The children follow the condition of the mother. If the mother be a bond-woman, the issue is a slave. Marriage between slaves and free persons are prohibited, and where the prohibition is disregarded, the offender, the slave, is punished with death. Manumission is very rare among the slaves, and neither obedience or industry in peace nor heroism in war mitigates the condition of the slave. Once a slave, always a slave. The system in its operation is of a patriarchal character. A parallel; By reference to Stubb's Constitutional History of England, vol. I., page 44, we read of the ancient Saxons. Rudolph, the author of the Translation, Sancte Alexandri, writing about A. D. 1863, describes the Saxons of the early Frank Empire thus:--*--*--*--* "Of distinctions of race and nobility they are most tenaciously careful; they scarce ever (and here the writer quotes the Germania) allow themselves to be infected by any marriages with other or inferior races, and try to keep their nationality apart, sincere and unlike any other. Hence, the universal prevalence of one physical type. The race consists of four ranks of men, the noble, the free, the freedmen, and the servi. And it is by law established that no order shall, in contracting marriages, remove the landmarks of its own class; but noble must marry noble, freeman, freewoman; freedman, freedwoman; serf, handmaid. If any take a wife of different or higher rank than his own, he has to expiate the act with his life."

        I should perhaps leave an impression which would be misleading as to Liberia and Africa unless I be more explicit. If you have observed, in any utterance of mine, anything about Africa which seems to possess in itself, or as to the races of that continent, a roseate hue, be pleased to remember that I have faintly, and with unartistic hand, shown you a part of this garden of the Lord and limned its inhabitants with the pencil and brush of an amateur; and I appeal to Mungo Park, the sainted Livingstone, Barth, Schweinfurth, Nachtigal, and I may risk Stanley in the rear of this galaxy of friends of Africa, for more accurate data and for larger and fuller experiences. But I may astound you when I say that Africa fears not the invasion of her shores by Europe and the rightful acquisition of her territory, and that no Negro who knows Africa regards the European's advent there as a menace to the progress and advancement of her races, except when they bring with them rum and firearms. I am pronouncedly, and have been since I first stepped upon the soil of my fatherland in 1878, an African colonizationist, but I am so in a strictly qualified sense, as is shown in the official statement made to my and your government--made from the United States Consulate-General, Monrovia, under the date of February 21, 1883.

        It may not be inopportune or out of place to say, in the interest of the prospective immigrant and in the interest of Liberia, that it is perhaps unwise for persons to emigrate here simply for the purpose of being free and enjoying complete civil liberty and social equality. The State is young, and, though poor in developed resources, is vigorous in purpose and effort, and needy only of additional influences of civilization which are possessed by those who, at their homes, have displayed the ability of independent labor and proprietorship. That is to say, that the man needed as an immigrant here is one who,

in his home, displays industry and fixedness of purpose sufficient to cause him to stick at work of some kind until he has earned and saved enough to purchase a comfortable home, is competent to control it and does control it, or a man who has entered upon a business and has self-denial enough to continue in it to the end of respectably supporting himself and family, or who has made himself a boss of some supporting trade--a man who is not directly dependent upon being a common servant, and who is not an ignorant laborer incapable of turning up something by his innate good sense and the God-given push within him.

        Liberia possesses no large class of citizens who need or are able to employ a servant class from a foreign country. Intelligent laborers are needed, not ignorant ones. The constitution of this Republic guarantees to each immigrant so much cultivable land. The purpose of such grant is obvious; the improvement of it, the means of supporting one's self from the soil, is the consideration for the gift, thereby winning from the forest and jungle valued lands capable of indefinite production, and winning from ignorance the native races by the pursuit of the arts of peace. Such results can be obtained alone through intelligent, persistent industry.

        All agricultural labor, all coast labor, loading and unloading vessels, and fishing, all house service, are carried on, in general, by aborigines. Farm labor is worth from $2.50 to $4.00 per month, exclusive of housing and feeding. This is paid principally in goods, or one-half goods and the other half money. Where this labor is well fed, and treated well, it is honest and reliable -- where these conditions are met there is no lack of it. The labor performed by the citizen class is farm proprietorship, trader, merchant, mechanic, professional, and governmental. There is a minority of farm laborers of the civilized Liberian class.

        A clear understanding of the conditions of labor here is important to that class of foreign Negroes who contemplate settlement here. The possession of a few hundred dollars, skill in labor, and executive ability, constitute a capital that cannot but secure a most comfortable living here with a probability of wealth.

        Unless the Negro out of Africa goes to Africa seeking a home because he has none; goes of his own volition, with as correct a knowledge of Africa as may be obtained from the writings of trustworthy African travelers and explorers and missionaries, reinforced by race loyalty, and with greater confidence in himself and his race than in any alien self and alien race; goes from a sense of duty imposed by his Christian enlightenment, and not unprovided with ability and previous experience to organize and control labor, with as ample means as he would go with from the Atlantic coast of the United States to the Pacific slope for the purpose of engaging in business, he is wholly and entirely unsuited for Africa, and would impede by his presence not only the progress of Liberia (if he went thither), but any part of Africa by his unprofitable presence, and ought to be denied the right to expatriate himself.

        If by anything that I have said you have been impressed with the fact that you are descendants of African races and as a consequence that you are a separate and distinct people from Caucasian races, and that the highest excellence to which an individual can attain must be to work according to

the bent of his genius, and the other to work in harmony with God's design in his creation, on his race line; if I have impressed you at all with the wisdom or propriety of confiding in the highest Negro authorities and the best alien writings, for reliable data respecting our race in the fatherland, and thereby awakened in you an interest and sincere desire for the well being of Africa and her races, for our people, and for accurate information concerning that most ancient, and most mysterious of lands; then I feel conscious of having made a contribution of information not wholly valueless to my countrymen that may tend to modify and dissipate general ignorance of us and of our antecedents and their country; and I have done something toward awakening your dormant self-respect, and given you some conception of the dignity which attaches to Negro manhood, and created in you a preference for your race before all other races; and this sentiment, if produced, will place you en rapport with the Negroes in Africa, who have no conception of any land greater, more beautiful than their own; any men braver and manlier than themselves, any women better, lovlier, and handsomer than African women. Then you will retire from this place with a feeling of stimulus rather than of satiety, of unrest rather than of repose; then shall I retire from my effort to interest you in Africa in Africa, and Africa in America with satisfied pride in having performed something of duty as a Negro--clear in his conviction of the high destiny in reserve for Africa and its races, and of your duty to be loyal to the race, since true allegiance will make us sharers in that glory which the sacred writing declares shall come, when Ethiopa shall stretch forth her hand unto God.

The Policy of the American Colonization Society

BY
THOMAS G. ADDISON, D.D.
DELEGATE OF THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY

        The Rev. Thomas G. Addison, D.D., attended the Congress as a representative of the American Colonization Society, and, although not on the program for a paper, made a short address in which he said in substance that the society which he represented was frequently misunderstood and misrepresented as desiring to get all the Negroes out of this country. Nothing could be farther from the truth. For the welfare of the little Republic of Liberia, which it founded, the Society desired to see only a limited number of emigrants going there from this country at present, and these should be of the very best class in character, general intelligence, industry and thrift. There were more than a hundred thousand applications from Negroes in the United States for assistance in emigrating to Liberia now on file in the office of the Society, and new applications were received daily.

        The Society had adopted the following outline of its policy:

        1. "Colonists aided hereafter to be selected with special reference to the needs of Liberia, and to be located with more care and to better advantage to themselves.

        2. Funds held in trust for education to be applied in ways to aid and stimulate the Liberian Government to more energetic action in establishing and fostering an efficient system of public schools rather than in merely supporting independent schools.

        3. The society to make special effort to collect and diffuse more full and reliable information about Liberia and Africa, and, as a bureau of information, to make itself practically useful both to Liberia and the Negroes in the United States desiring to emigrate there.

        4. The Society to promote in every possible way the establishment of more direct, frequent, and quicker communication between the United States and Liberia.

        5. The chief end of the work of the Society to be in the line of enabling and stimulating Liberia to depend less and less upon others and more and more upon herself."

        It would be seen at once that it proposed with its present limited means to leave emigration to Liberia largely to pay its own way hereafter, and to make use of its means in furnishing fuller and better information about the country, improving its schools, its agriculture and other industries, and attempting to bring about more direct, quicker and less expensive means of communication between the United States and Liberia.

        The thousands of letters received by this Society annually from Negroes in the United States show conclusively that a very large number of these people

feel that they are and must continue to be at great disadvantage in a country dominated by the white race, that they are engaged in a hopeless conflict, and they desire, more especially for the sake of their children, to escape from this hostile environment.

        The main purpose of the Society is to assist in building up a Negro Republic in Africa, a civilized, progressive, Christian nation, for the sake of itself, for the sake of the benign influence it may have on the Two Hundred Million, (200,000,000), of the native people of that great continent, and in the general interest of the race.

        Whatever may be the final outcome it is safe to assert that the results thus far are creditable to the Liberians. Liberia is still in its infancy, that country is not yet a United States, and Monrovia is not yet a London, or New York. For forty-nine years it has, however, without any foreign governmental protection or assistance, maintained an independent government and in an orderly manner by the votes of its electors changed its legislative and executive administrations at the regular periods prescribed by its constitution. In all that time it has had no violent revolutions and on no occasion has substituted force for law.

        Many of its citizens have displayed intelligent industry and enterprise, have acquired and cultivated large and productive coffee farms, bringing them a handsome income annually, built themselves commodious brick residences, and furnished them with all the comforts and even luuxries of a well arranged English or American home. They have given their children a good education and contributed liberally for the support of schools, churches and other public institutions. No better citizens can be found in any country. What these men have done may be done again by any immigrant of like character, intelligence and industry.

        The government of Liberia gives to each immigrant 25 acres of good public land, and at almost a nominal price he can purchase as much more as he desires. As this land produces two crops of vegetables each year, it is an easy matter to raise enough to support a family. A coffee grove can be planted at once, which if properly cultivated will begin to bear in from three to five years, and in from five to ten years can be made to bring its owner an income in gold of at least $1,000.

        All that is wanted is a Negro of good character, intelligence and pluck, and all this can be realized in a land where he will enjoy without let or hindrance the fullest civil and social equality.

        The American Colonization Society desires to see only such men as have been alluded to emigrating to Liberia, men that can help build a state and not men who will be only an additional burden.

        Hitherto emigrants have settled largely in the tide water region, where on account of malaria and other causes, the conditions are not so favorable to health and enterprise. The Society now proposes to assist in forming settlements in the higher and more healthful region above the first rapids in the St. Paul river, in the vicinity of Mt. Coffee, and from this departure it looks forward to great benefits to Liberia, better health, greater industry, improved agriculture, the building of good roads, and the introduction of new and valuable domestic animals.

On Health Conditions and Hygiene in Central
Africa

BY
ROBERT W. FELKIN, M.D., F.R.G.S., F.R.S.E.
LECTURER ON DISEASES OF THE TROPICS AND CLIMATOLOGY,
EDINBURG MEDICAL SCHOOL

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

        It is with diffidence that I accept the very complimentary invitation I received on the 18th of November to contribute a paper on Health Conditions and Hygiene in Central Africa to your Congress. Had it not been that I am greatly interested in the civilization of Africa, I must have refused the invitation, as the time at my disposal is totally inadequate to do justice to my theme. You must kindly excuse all shortcomings, but I will not waste time by making further excuses, which I feel under the circumstances to be unnecessary.

        There are various reasons why it is difficult to do missionary or civilizing work in Africa. Although the climate is the chief barrier, it is not the only one. What then are the others? To my mind they may be summed up briefly as follows: Difficulty of transport, ignorance on the part of missionary societies at home and of the agents sent out, and again, the faulty selection of those agents. Let me then say that all persons should be examined before they are accepted for work in Africa. The individual should be of slightly bilious or, better still, bilio-nervous temperament or else of a sanguine temperament, but that is not quite so good. Persons having a lymphatic temperament should be rejected. No one who has a syphilitic, rheumatic, scorbutic, or malarious history should go to the tropics, nor should persons who have heart disease or a nervous family history be permitted to go. Eyes and ears should be sound. No one should go under twenty-five years of age. Women with any tendency todiseases peculiar to their sex should not be allowed to go. Phthisical persons should be rejected. Many of the deaths which take place would be avoided if the foregoing points were kept in mind.

        The next point is that the persons selected should have some instruction as to the climate of Africa, the kind of life they will have to lead, the people they will mix with and the precautions which they must take if they are to be of any use in Africa whatever. To my mind it is both foolish and wicked to send out young, ignorant, unhealthy persons to try to work for the Master in Africa. If they live to return home after a few month's work, they are in most cases invalids for life, a burden to themselves and to the church which sent them forth. Africa is thick with the graves of men and women who might have done good work at home. Providence will not take "special" care of the weak or the foolish, let their intentions be never so good.

        With regard to training before a person goes out, a full medical training with special instruction in tropical diseases would be good, but, apart from this, "first aid" should be taught, also how a house is to be built, how drainage is to be dealt with, etc. A little knowledge of carpentering and smith work, as well as boot repairing, is also of use. The people sent out should be "handy" ones, not bookworms. These remarks apply to white and colored people alike, and it must not be forgotten that Negroes from America cannot expect to be able to settle in Africa without some hardship and difficulty.

        The outfit should be ample, first-rate goods must be sent, but lavish expenditure is not needed.

        Another point is the difficulty in transport. The coast line is the most fatal region in Africa, and till we have railways we cannot expect very great things. For the last fourteen years I have, in season and out of season, been calling out for railways. Now several are being built, and it will soon be possible for missionaries to be taken rapidly across the zone of death which girdles Africa, to the comparatively healthy land, which forms the great central plateau. In any case, however, those going to Africa should begin to take three grains of quinine daily for a week before landing and go on doing so for six or eight weeks thereafter, but to this I will refer again, only noting that the drug should not be taken with either tea or coffee, as is so often done, with the effect of bringing discredit on a useful, indeed the only prophylactic drug we possess.

        I must pass over details of personal outfit, merely saying that especial attention should be paid to solar helmet, woolen shirts, thick stockings and good boots. Cholera belt should always be worn, a good hammock is useful, and a mosquito netting indispensable.

        The arrival on the coast of Africa should be timed to be at the coolest time of the year. This time varies in different regions.

        With regard to transport, at present men must carry the loads; each load should weigh 40 to 45 lbs., never more. Oblong cases are best and the goods in them should be well assorted, so that a large number of cases need not be opened en route. One of the great drawbacks to all expeditions has been in the size of the cases sent out by outfitters. They are always too heavy and much time is wasted and many lives lost owing to the delay in repacking goods before starting for the coast. I never heard of an expedition which did not suffer in this way.

        In order to be successful, the expedition should leave the coast as soon as ever possible and porters should be ordered beforehand so as to be ready to start directly it arrives. It may be needful to camp for a day or two away from the coast to get the expedition shipeshape, but each delay is dangerous.

        All young or inexperienced men make the initial and grave mistake of starting with too long marches. They want to "get on", to beat the record, or perform some such foolishness. The result is that their porters break down and that they themselves get over-fatigued. My strong advice is to make haste slowly. A five or ten miles' march a day at first is ample; a little longer after a week on the road if it is necessary. A halt should be made for rest on Sundays, if in a good camp, but not if the camp is badly situated. The porters should be well treated, firmly but kindly. It is regrettable that it should be

necessary to mention this point, but it is needful. The leader of the expedition should always march in front, so that he may be on the spot if any difficulty occurs. The second in charge should march in the rear to look after stragglers.

        The only rules I can give for the march are: have coffee, or cocoa and biscuits before starting; do not start till after sunrise (after the grass is dry is best); do not march under the noon-day sun, and, with the object of avoiding chill, put on a light wrap when halting. At the end of the march, before cooling down, take a bath (not too cold) and have a good rub down with a rough towel. If possible, get the march over by 11:00 A.M.; if that is impossible, march, say, from 7 A.M. to 10:30 A.M. and again from three to five or six P.M. Do not drink much on the march; it is a mere question of habit. Cold tea is the best drink. It should be taken in small quantities, but it should be made properly in order that it may quench the thirst. Take a metal teapot, holding a quart; put in it two teaspoonfuls of tea, then heat the dry pot to a temperature about that of boling water. Then fill the pot with actually boiling water and decant the infusion at once and cool it in a basin. If the water be allowed to stand on the leaves, the fluid is not so good for quenching the thirst. Never touch alcohol in any form on the march. If it is taken at all, it should not be taken until evening, and even then it is better omitted from the dietary.

        It is most important to select a good site for a camp. Take the highest ground available, avoiding as far as may be, the vicinity of swamps, river banks, gullies or valleys, and even in a plain try to camp on a mound, for malaria clings to the ground and 15 or 20 feet make all the difference to the salubrity of the site.

        On arriving at the camp, mark off the place for the laterines well to the leeward, have a trench dug round the tent, especially if the halt is to be for more than one day; have a good fire before the tent door. Personally I prefer a grass hut to any tent, but if a tent is used, it should be one with a double roof and the best I know is Edgington's green tent for tropical Africa. The best size is 9 by 7 by 7; it weighs 90 lbs. In any case the tent must protect from sun, rain and wind and should be well ventilated. Whilst the tent is being pitched, the water supply should be seen to. Set a watch over this supply, if needful, to prevent the porters bathing in it, as they so often do before a supply for cooking is obtained. All the water should be filtered (Pasteur's filter should be used) and boiled before use. Food should be well cooked on the march; it is s mistake to eat badly prepared food and native food does not at first suit the new comer.

        Marches try the temper very much, owing to the frequent discomfort and contretemps. Men should be "slow to anger," and make it a rule to employ the soft answer which turneth away wrath. It is advisable, on the march at any rate, for each person to have his own cook, and have his meals by himself. This may be thought curious advice, but if my authority is not forcible enough, I can quote a far higher, which will at once be acknowledged, namely, that of General Gordon. He told me that it was his strong advice to every African traveler, and that it would tend to avoid most of the quarrels which are the curse of African travel. One man wants meat, another does not; one man likes his food cooked in one way, one in another. Why fight about it?

Let each cater for himself. It is a fact that a boon companion in a temperate climate may be a very fiend in Africa; therefore avoid all occasions for strife; bear and forbear. I might give many other details on camp life, but these few must suffice.

        I now turn to the important point of fixing on a permanent settlement, and notice some point which will tend to render it as salubrious as possible. It is a mistake to hurry in the choice of a settlement, and as a rule the permanent settlement should not be made until after a year's residence in a district, for it often happens that a very short distance off a better site may be found than the one which at first sight seems best. A rough and ready method of finding out if a district is malarious is to apply the "spleen test." If the majority of the natives have enlarged spleens, go elsewhere if possible. If few of them suffer the place should be fairly healthy.

        The settlement should be at as high an altitude as possible, on a slope with well-wooded land to the windward and with a stream at the bottom of the slope, but not too near. Find out from the natives the prevailing local winds, so as to get your settlement sheltered from them if you can. The cultivated land should be placed to the lee of the compound. Do not cut down a single tree unless absolutely necessary, before a survey of the place has been made. It should be remembered that disturbing the land developes malaria, therefore camp away whilst the site is being prepared and the compound being built.

        The following notes on the choice of a permanent settlement may be of use:

        With regard to elevation of the site, instead of selecting a spot close to a river or in a valley, or even upon low-lying land, a considerable altitude should be secured, if possible. Hill stations are always the best, but a spot even from 50 to 200 feet above the surrounding country will always be beneficial. It is well also, if practicable, to secure a position which will readily furnish natural drainage. Ravines and their entrances are almost always unhealthy from their being often traversed by chilling winds, of which there is an up current by day and a down current by night. But the worst form of ravine is a long, narrow valley which becomes contracted near the outlet. Places situated at the base of a hill should always be shunned. In the tropics it is usually found that at the base of hills the vegetation is rank and luxurious, suggesting that the locality is consequently healthy. But no greater mistake could be made, for this luxurious vegetation is the result of an excessive amount of moisture; the rain collects upon the hill tops, flows down their sides and thus keeps the land near their bases in a constantly moist condition. This condition, however, may be modified where a deep ravine exists near the base of the hill. This may carry off the drainage, and the land beyond the ravine may be quite healthy.

        Depressions in plains are worse than those on the hills, since drainage is always liable to occur in the latter, and thus even a gravel basin lying in a plain may be constantly damp on account of drainage into it. Then, again, the proximity of marshes must be carefully avoided; all places near to a marsh at a less altitude than 1,500 feet are to be avoided. It must also be remembered that malaria originating in a marsh may be carried horizontally as well as vertically, and at least a mile distant from a marsh must, if possible,

be found. It is true that malaria is probably not diffused on a calm day to a greater distance horizontally than vertically, but winds and air currents blowing over a marsh may convey it to a distance of even two or three miles. As a rule, a mile of water renders a place safe. If, again, a belt of dense forest trees should intervene between a marsh and a proposed settlement, they may act as a screen or filter and render the spot healthy unless they are removed or burnt down accidentally.

        The brushwood and vegetation around the station must be cleared away, for they not only check the free movement of the air, but thereby create a stagnant stratum of still air highly charged with decaying vegetable matter. It is, however, well to encourage the growth of short grass around the station; it cools the ground by protecting it from the sun and by increasing evaporation. It may be mentioned here that the removal of dense brushwood is even dangerous to the natives, and should only be permitted during the hottest part of the day. With reference to the soil itself, the most important point to consider is dryness, and, where the choice is open, gravel is best for a foundation, unless it be situated so low that the subsoil water is very near the surface and so renders it damp. Gravelly hills furnish the best of all sites, and the springs at their feet are usually pure. If a high, bare or nearly bare site can be found, it is to be preferred. Diluvial deposits brought down by floods are never desirable; here are often alternations of sandy loam and clayey strata, with vegetable matter disseminated through it. The alluvium often contains iron and alumina with siliceous particles and probably underneath stiff clay or clayey brick earth will be found. This stratum is often only two or three feet beneath the surface. Europeans will never be able to maintain health on such a soil, since malaria is very rife there and the water very impure. All clays and marls are unhealthy, for only the most complete and deep subsoil drainage can make them suitable for dwelling on. Clayey soils require to be doubly drained.

        Chalk and limestone, however, form healthy soil if unmixed with clay, but in this case again it is not uncommon to find clay underlying them, and this, receiving the drainage percolating through from above, renders them malarious. Rocks may be regarded as healthy, with the exception of decomposing ferruginous granite. Sandstone is healthy, but the water found in its vicinity is frequently impure. Siliceous sands may be good when extending to a great depth and free from organic matter. They are naturally dry and healthy, and the water near is usually good. But other sands, argillaceous, calcareous and the like, especially when mixed with organic matter, or lying above a layer of clay or laterite, are damp and consequently unwholesome.

        Having settled upon the ground it has now to be prepared for building. It must be properly leveled, with a slope of about one inch in six feet to insure surface drainage. Subsoil drains should then be sunk from five to eight feet deep in the ground, and placed about twelve feet apart. The surface drainage should be provided for by shallow, open drains. The foundations of the house should be excavated as little as possible in order to avoid more than is necessary disturbance of the soil. The house should be built on piles five feet above the level of the ground, and the surface under the house and round it where rain may fall from the roof should be paved or cemented, with a good

gutter all round. Into all the details of building I cannot enter. They depend on building material obtainable, money available, etc., but the following hints may be given: Build the house with the gable towards the prevailing wind; let it be of two stories if possible. Have a good verandah all round it ten or twelve feet wide, and on the southern or western sides jalousies should be placed covering from two to four feet at the upper part of the verandah. The rooms in the house should be large enough to give each person 100 superficial feet or 3,000 cubic feet of space. The roof should be double, with an air-space between the two roofs. The windows should be made so that the upper part may open inwards and downward so as to direct the air upwards.

        A good bath-house should be provided near the house, also a laterine, both being connected with the house by a covered way. The greatest care should be taken in seeing that the compound is kept clean, and that the garbage is daily removed. Earth closets are the best to use in the tropics, about twelve pounds of dry earth is required per head per diem. For the servants the trench system is the best; shallow trenches, twelve or eighteen inches deep, should be used; earth should be thrown over the excretas, and as soon as an acre or so of trenches are full the whole may be ploughed up and sown with vegetables. After three crops have been grown the ground may be used again.

        The water supply needs great care, about thirty gallons per head per diem will be required. An artesian tube well will be advisable; forty feet of 1½ inch steel piping, in 5-foot sections, and a pump will cost about £4. I cannot enter into details, but it draws the water from the bottom and cuts off the direct entrance of water from higher levels. Whatever water reaches it must filter through a considerable depth of earth.

        Water for drinking and cooking purposes must be filtered and boiled, not boiled and then filtered. If there is much mud in the water treat it with alum before filtering. As boiled water is not palatable, areate it before drinking. This can be done by placing it in a porous jar and letting it drip down into a vessel placed below it.

        Having now given some idea as to how to reach and how to found a fairly healthy home, it remains for me to give a few hints on personal hygiene.

        A man or woman going to Africa as a missionary or civilizer owes it to society as well as to himself to use all precautions to retain health. I do not for a moment mean that he is to be namby pamby, or think that the slightest malaria is to be fatal, indeed fear causes more deaths than are pleasant to contemplate, but "sanctified common sense" must be used.

        A man in the tropics must be temperate in all things; in food, in drink, in work and in play. He should have a hobby not connected with his special work. Boating, geology, anthropology; anything you like. Something to take his mind off the worries of every day life.

        He should cultivate an even temper, should not be given to gossip, should not be "thin skinned," excentric or a man of one idea.

        Probably the following notes will give hints which may with advantage be followed: The hair should be kept short, the body perfectly clean, nor should the feet be forgotten. Dr. Murray advises the following tooth powder to be used night and morning: Sulphate of quinine, 3 drachms; oil of eucalyptus,

2 drachms; rose oil, 10 drops; Armenian bole, 1 ounce; camphorated chalk, 5 ounces. Triturate well, and keep in stoppered bottles, each containing one ounce. Carbolic or eucalyptus soap should be used.

        Exercise is needed; it should be vigorous, so as to cause free perspiration, either a good walk for two hours, a hilly walk if possible, or tennis or riding or dumb-bell exercise. The exercise should be taken in the cool of the day and a bath and rubdown therereafter. All chill should be avoided, and note that just after sunset there may be a sudden fall in the temperature, therefore if out at that time a light wrap should be available. Again, about 4 A. M. it is apt to be very cold (relatively), and an extra blanket may be needed, or the fire in the hut or room stirred up. I got into the habit of waking about 3:30 A. M., and thus avoided many a chill. Speaking of fires, it is well to note that a fire is always useful if the weather permits; it keeps the room dry, it prevents malaria to some extent, it drives away mosquitoes; in the open, if built so as to give off a dense smoke, it keeps one dry, the smoke forming, as it were, a canopy above.

        Always sleep in a mosquito net, whether there be mosquitoes or no. The net acts as a filter to the air breathed. It should be fine, and steeped in sulphate of ammonia, one part by weight to five parts of boiled water. This makes it uninflammable (Dr. Murray). A pint is required for one foot of net. Steep it for three hours, then dry and iron.

        Never sleep on the ground; a few feet make all the difference. If compelled to sleep on the ground, which is hardly ever needful if a hammock is taken, have a waterproof ground-sheet, and to keep off snakes, scorpions, etc., place a coil of camel's hair rope round the bed.

        Avoid fogs and night air; indeed keep indoors from sunset till sunrise if possible; never go out with an empty stomach. If bound to be out at night in a very malarious district, a respirator on which is placed a few drops of eucalyptus oil may be used with benefit.

        Avoid chill after violent exercise or a wetting, change the clothes as soon as may be; put on an overcoat if an immediate change is not possible. Draughts should be avoided.

        It is safe to say that quinine, the hydrochlorate by preference, is the only drug which is of use as a prophylactic against malaria, but it must be used with common sense. Unmeasured doses should never be taken, three or four grains a day is enough, taken with soup, never with tea or coffee, which beverages should not be taken for two hours after the quinine. I do not even think it a good plan to take these small doses of the drug for too long, as it is apt to affect the brain and nervous system, and also should fever occur, as is most likely, far larger doses of the drug will be required to cut it short than would otherwise be the case.

        If in a healthy station, the regular use of quinine is unnecessary. Take it if on the march, if the rainy season comes on and when the rains cease, or if unwonted exertion has been undergone, or if sleeplessness occur.

        Care must be taken to avoid the sun; the slanting rays of the morning and evening sun are to be feared. A good solar helmet should be used; an umbrella with a white cover is not to be despised. The small of the back too

needs protection, and the flannel shirts should be made with a double thickness down the spine, or a good Kummer band should be worn. The neck should be free, no high collars being worn.

        Dysentery may be avoided by care in respect of food and drinking water, and by avoiding depression and over-exertion.

        I greatly regret that press of work prevents me from elaborating this brief paper as I would wish, and as the important subject demands.

MRS. M. FRENCH-SHELDON, F. R. G. S.
Lecturer on Africa
Organizer and Leader of an Independent Expedition for the Exploration of the region of Kilima-Njaro in East Africa; Author of "From Sultan to Sultan"

Practical Issues of an African Experience

BY
MRS. M. FRENCH-SHELDON, F. R. G. S.,
AFRICAN EXPLORER; AUTHOR OF "FROM SULTAN TO SULTAN"

        Lord Chesterfield has said: "I join behavior with learning, because it is almost a necessity, and they should go together for their mutual advantage." I venture to go further and say: "Deportment is akin to religion." Hence it becomes all those who aspire to propound the tenets of Christianity to deferentially behave as Christians--not to preach and teach one thing and live and enact another, while seeking to conduct the so-called benighted natives of Africa, or any other country, into the light of civilization and Christianity. Animated by the belief that all of God's creatures, in whatsoever clime, of different color, notwithstanding their environments or ignorance, if approached in the proper manner with justice, peace, and patient humanity, and the desire to, would find an echo in the natives' nature and arouse the better qualities and the good--which is the God--latent in the very lowest of God's creatures.

        I hear considerable talk about the African question. I know not what the real import of this question is, as set forth by speakers I have not heard, but, mark you, if it means anything concerning the Afro-American and the native African being one and the same nation, amenable to the same treatment and consideration, and in any way as suggestive that the Afro-American's real home-land is in Africa, I must publicly disavow any belief in the doctrine, and will touch upon my reasons later on.

        The greatest impiety and preposterous assumption on the part of human kind is the calling into question the rights of life or salvation of any of God's creatures. This belief was so grounded in my mind, which is predisposed by its Quaker heredity to peaceful solutions of questions, I determined, "if circumstances would lead me, to find where truth was hid." After pondering over the outrages and cruelties perpetrated by aliens in their invasive progress throughout Africa--after hearkening to the horrible tales of the natives' heinous deeds, their hopeless degradation, their utter devoidness of uplifting sentiments or tender emotions, I solemnly resolved to visit Africa on an independent, unsponsored expedition, unhampered by sectarianism, or state interest or commercial greed, or white companions or lieutenants, and visit tribes, as far as possible, where the white man's influence, the Arab traders' man-hunting were measurably unknown, and even where missionary influence might not yet have reached. In fact, study the raw native, the untutored,

unrevised aborigine, with his vices, his ignorance, his intellectual poverty, and his possibilities in their primitive state.

        After a dedication of years, gleaning from every source available what had been done, and determining what should not be done, getting glimpses into the superstitions, habits, and life and language of as many different tribes as possible, and submitting to training in order to be able to stand the necessary physical stress and hardships from exposure, unavoidable while marching through plains, forests, and over almost inaccessible mountain passes, swimming streams, and strove to nerve and discipline myself to a spirit of self-abnegation and fortitude which made it possible to face with some degree of complacency the very great chances of death, then I determined to make the experiment, cost what it would, in behalf of humanity, and succeeded far beyond my most fervent expectations, without bloodshed.

        Suffice it, the world has become sufficiently familiarized with what it is please to call "the unique undertaking of a woman," and it would be entirely unnecessary to recapitulate all that.

        Adopting the native Inshalluh, equivalent to our Christian God writing, the venture was made without bloodshed, and I have concluded that the extreme measures employed by some would-be colonizers, most explorers and treaty-makers are unnecessarily atrocious, and without the pale of either civilization or humanity. If, instead of carrying emblems of war and hostility into alien lands, they had carried the emblem of God-which is love--the results might have been immeasurable towards the religious progress, weal and higher development of millions of misguided, misjudged and oppressed creatures.

        Foolish admirers and hero-worshippers are wont to say that this work, undertaken and accomplished, was because it was destined. To those persons I would say, that "she who did these things" was not born to do them, but took her "license in her work." I am wont to opine with the noble Henry Ward Beecher, "The elects are whosoever wills, the non-elects are whosoever wonts"--and Solomon said, "He that hath love in his breast hath spurs in his side,"--and so, I found it a great truth when put into execution. Allow me to reiterate, that it makes no difference who goes to Africa, or elsewhere as to the sequences of his or her work, it depends upon how they go,--how they behave; this reverts back to that universal link between deportment and religion.

        Through independent action the conclusions which I will present without further preamble for your consideration, have been deductions made on the spot, and to which I am more fully convinced by present retrospection and prevailing tendencies. Before summarizing, allow me to make a brief departure on the question of the Afro-Americans. Unfortunately fanatical zealots have represented the Afro-Americans' rights of nativity in Africa, forgetting that after several generations that most of the negroes in America have become thoroughly Americanized; they are born Southerners and have no longer any proclivities for the life of the natives in Africa; and more than all that, they are now freemen in America, and the fact is that unless they have such qualities and such wealth as to give them certain powers and rights as leaders, or chiefs, if they returned, to most parts of Africa, they would find themselves thrust back into the conditions of servitude and slavery, harder to

bear after their education and emancipation than was experienced during the old régime in the South. In affirmation of this point, of almost universal slavery amongst the natives even at this late day, it gives me great pleasure to refer as an authority to the celebrated Heli Chatelain, and other men of similar knowledge and experience.

        Another point: What is being done so effectually in America, especially below Mason and Dixon's line, in manual, industrial, and agricultural training, which constitutes such an important part in almost all of the educational institutions inaugurated during the last thirty years for the Afro-American, is the very necessity of Africa to-day, upon which its future prosperity and the wholesome enlightenment pivots.

        The basis of a future development of not only Africa, but the Africans, must be through agricultural and domestic and industrial means, rather than through purely denominational religious and educational methods of the ethical type. Any serious-thinking individual will be willing to admit that it is utterly preposterous and perfectly incongruous to the maintenance of his own self-esteem; that the fine distinctions and dogmas of various creeds can be made simple and interpretable to the primitive intellects of people who have no comparative knowledge, no education excepting such as the exigencies of their lives and their peculiar environments render, living for the most part pastoral lives, except as they follow the vocation of hunters and warriors, devoid of all refining surroundings, living in huts so meanly constructed that they are scarcely fit to be considered by us as decent shelters for animals, into which they must enter, while reducing themselves to the attitude of quadrupeds and creep in on their hands and knees; without light excepting that which emanates from their fires, huddled with their animals, men, women, and children, promiscuously--their bodies daubed with grease and clay to which soap and water are strangers,--can understand what it has taken enlightened races centuries to divide off in special and distinctive creeds for the acceptance of different minds. No! No! It is impossible.

        The trouble has been that the foundations have not been properly laid; an infinite amount of philanthropic money, the sacrifice of lives, loss of time, has occurred through the fallacious methods of beginning at the steeple-top instead of building a foundation, letting the superstructure be a gradual evolution in a wholesome, natural, and steadfast manner. Sound through and through.

        The love of prestige, glory and reputation prevailed universally in every tribe I visited. This made the open sesame for me to their most intimate lives and characteristics; for I maintained this prestige without ever deviating from its forms and ceremonies; and it is well that they have it, for it is through this one quality that civilization and christianization will be most readily accepted by them. A singular fact, that all the chiefs or sultans whom I encountered on the eastern coast, recognized the dignity and might of labor, inasmuch as in all the onward movements in this Western continent towards the progression and enlightenment of the world, some of the most affluent, most refined, most cultured of the upper class of men and women have devoted, tirelessly, their time, money, and energies to the acknowledged betterment of the populace, and this without price. Their assiduous, praiseworthy

efforts have inducted a fresh, virile, energizing force, uplifting labor to the eminence of personal dignity, until it is regarded a shame for any mortal to exist indolently despite their position or personal tendencies otherwise.

        It was the chiefs or sultans who were the expert craftsmen; they were the Fundas, or blacksmiths of the tribes, and they were proud of the production of a finely tempered, well-modeled spear, or knife, or delicately made metal-chains, as might any gunsmith or jeweler in civilized countries have been of similar work; and so proud and jealous were they of their particular class of work that they put what was equivalent to a sterling mark on all work made in their individual tribe, and after making a certain number of specimen patterns, some of the important, apt youth in the tribe, frequently the sons or nephews of the sultan, would be trusted to execute all other spears needed, exactly adhering to the sultan's pattern, and submit the finished work to the expert eye of the sultan to attest their quality and finish before this sterling mark could be placed upon them. Admitting that they do this work simply for self exaltation, or even for acquisition of riches, it is an admirable quality to deal with. After all, if we would admit it, our love of power, and love to excel, and love of adulation or admiration is what animates us to do the most valiant deeds and spurs us to the greatest perfection. It is the foundation stone upon which heroes stand, it is the root of progress, and if judiciously used, in the further instruction of the natives in Africa, it can be turned to immeasurable service in the gradual enlightenment of not only individuals, but of whole tribes; first, because of the power it gives the native, he will seek to learn certain useful things introduced by teachers, finding that each new acquirement gives him greater power; hence, with no nobler motive than the acquirement of knowledge simply for the sake of power, he strives to excel; presently, in due time, he finds that the knowledge is gained from the so-called enlightened teacher, and as a natural consequence, he seeks enlightenment to the fullest, mainly in the first instance, for his material betterment; but during this passing of ignorance to knowledge his mind quickens, becomes alert and susceptible, and his condition becomes truly amenable to the very best influences in life and education that may be offered him. This can be wisely followed up and turned to the best account in a spiritual, moral way.

        This is practical--it is possible--it must be the way to first reach these people. Hence is it that I stand as one proclaiming the Gospel of Soap and Candles, Hammer and Saw, and Loom as the primary method of instruction for all so-called savage nations, and all mediocre people. For example, candles like those which I taught them to make [Mrs. Sheldon here showed a candle] brought light, brightness, and morality into their huts. Look you, how significant can it be used by those who have no thought but the religion of the people and the christianization of them. May the teacher who follows the Gospel of the Candle not use this as a symbol, and say in such terms as their natives can appreciate and comprehend, "as this light has brought you so much comfort in your material existence, this teaching which gives you light of the almighty God will bring you light and comfort for all your sufferings and sorrows, and be a guide for your future life?"

        And this Gospel of Soap [Mrs. Sheldon showed a piece of soap made for the

natives], may it not also be used with the same significance--"as this makes your body clean, and leaves a delicate perfume which delights your nostrils, this spiritual love which we will teach you of, will cleanse your soul as this cleanses your body."

        Then, again, as for the Gospel of the Saw and Hammer, is it not rational to give to people the means to make decent homes, so they can understand why it is the Christians build and beautify a house in which they worship God?

        Time has irrefutably demonstrated that all missionary and civilized work in Africa must be done through manual and domestic training and industrial schools, preparatory to whatever may follow in the way of higher education or christianization. My personal experience proves that you can develop exactly the qualities that you believe to exist in ignorant people, and after all is said, if one lives in harmony with their precepts and can openly submit to the native's extraordinary gift in detecting shams, he has done nobly. For after all is said, the greatest bane or sin of the native African is his primitive ignorance. Their language is circumscribed because they have no things in their lives to call for thought or give expression to, yet adroitly invent an appropriate for every new thing seen for the first time. The country is so vast--inhabitants numberless--yet for need of proper methods of transportation they have been shut off from the civilized influence of other countries, and with all the drawbacks that railroads may have, such as the introduction of avaricious traders, liquor, the vices of civilization, in greater proportion will be their civilizing influences, for it will be a deathblow to slavery; introducing commodities into Africa, which will make cultivation of their land easier and the reduction of their products into commercial values, and instead of using slaves as beasts of burden by transporting everything on their heads, the railroad will be available; and customs of other peoples will become known to them. As the natives are taught to read, they will become conversant with the outside world and what is going on, and many of them will be fired with a desire to visit other lands, and in these ways and commingling with others they will without intention imbibe knowledge of better life and condition, which they will return amongst their people and disseminate. Lateness in the development and enlightenment of Africa is by no means to be regretted, for it is in Africa as it will be in the development of the South, that all the experiments made heretofore in every avenue of life--the newest and most progressive methods of a mechanical, commercial or educational nature can be adopted without the expense of all that it has cost to bring them to perfection by more prosperous people. Take, for example, the city of Johannesburg in South Central Africa, which could only boast a few years ago of six thousand inhabitants, cut off far away from seaboard ports, taking weeks and weeks to reach the coast; whereas, to-day it is a thrifty, imposing city of over seventy thousand inhabitants, boasting of opera house, churches, beautiful residences, electric cars and electric lights, manufactories and a center of civilization, intellectual society and wealthy enterprises--where, to every white man who is working in the mines or on the railroad, according to Hon. Cecil Rhodes' statement some little time ago, there are a thousand natives. One cannot casually measure the influence that this one city will have upon the development of the surrounding country. Then,

too, the railroad projected from Cairo to the Congo and to Cape Town will cut a bright ray of possibilities from the North to West, East and South Africa.

        In view of this rapid introduction of commodities, comforts, luxuries and necessities by means of transportation which will bring about a better condition, not only for the natives, but for the white pioneers to live with some degree of immunity against former hardships, does it not behoove all those interested from divers reasons, with various aims in view, in a common sense, practical, and material way to make suitable preparation in sending out pioneers or teachers or preachers, or entering into commercial arrangements for the furtherance of their own or the African interest?

        Is it to be affirmed, without contradiction by those sordidly interested, or the extremist, who claims the black man was born for bondage, that the future African will placidly remain a subjugated, coerced citizen of alien government? Such a stand must provoke a contrary thought to the matter-of-fact, cool-headed, neutral onlooker, who is not even animated by humanity as he deliberates over cause and effect.

        May it not safely be prophesied that once enlightened, once realizing the immensity of their country, its limitless wealth, its grand commercial and other possibilities, these uncounted millions of people will struggle and fight to overthrow the governments they yielded so much to in their helpless days of blind, untutored ignorance?

        In the unexplored regions, billeted out geographically by vague ink-boundary lines, marking alien proctorship of the various alien governments, may there not be tribes powerful in numbers, quick to recognize, possibly, with surprising latent intelligence their birthright to Africa, and with that knowledge, may they not strive to overthrow the English, German, Portuguese, Belgian, Dutch, French "Sphere of Influence" set up under false pretenses in their midst?

        Africans, despite their ignorance, are human. They will fight as have other nations the world over, for country, for territorial boundaries--for their natural rights, for their beliefs, for their homes, for their women and children; and as do civilized nations this very day, to establish possessorship over weaker countries when an opponent avows a similar intention--they, too, will fight when self-interest is at stake, when even minor governmental or petty individual differences arise, if they pattern after the boastful nations of Christendom at this very time.

        Unwittingly the whole world, self-duped, has been paying an involuntary tribute to the peaceful, submissive attributes of the beleaguered, hood winked African, to have so confidently presupposed that he will never feel his power as a nation and turn fiercely to throw off the shackles of subjugation, which pledge his allegiance to expatriation, and repossess himself of his birthright. Mark you, he will, unless terrorized into submission by unequalled methods of warfare. Then his patriotism must remain a paradox.

        The Africans' greatest crime, after all, alas, has been their ignorance, their primitive ignorance, their simple arcadianism in morals and manners, wherein animalisms have had unguided sway. This must vanish before the resistless power of the world's constant progress, as the snow melts before the sun. The future of Africa, to the thoughtful, unprejudiced investigator, who

knows something of Africa from having been in Africa, is startling! Its marvelous natural resources--its gold--its diamonds--its agricultural opportunities--its industries--its commerce--yet in their infancy, have already bestirred the alert, far-seeing, prosperous nations with great covetousness. Alien is elbowing alien to-day, in his endeavor to stake off Africa; each for his own country or personal aggrandizement. The contagion will soon take hold of the natives. However, the future conflict, when it comes, will be terrific between the white invader and the swart-skinned African--for the latter will surely awaken to the fact of the material value of all he has unknowingly abrogated and submitted to when acquiescing to treaties made under the guise of civilization and the assumption of benefiting his race. Light is radiating the Dark Continent. It is time the white man called a halt and reformed his methods.

        In conclusion, as it has been attested by the most celebrated statesmen, the deepest thinkers, the closest students of political and domestic economy, allow me also to venture the remark that the greatest fulcrum of civilization is a legitimate commerce; and, to those who would preach, and teach, pray you, remember that there is something to impart as to the betterment of the life here on earth before you can successfully be a guide to or present any comprehensive view of the life hereafter, or clearly interpret the ethics of moral suasion to the Africans.

        As the Africans say when they put the seed of a mango into the ground, when they are on a journey, "I plant it that my brother who comes ten years hence may have fruit to eat," so let us plant these little seeds of truth that those who come ten years hence may have the fruition of our forethought.

        Abolish cant, and shams, seek to live according to the highest precepts; be humanly divine, merciful and noble when setting forth a code for others. Such humanity, such honest, exalted purpose, will impart a zest to all followers, and give all approached the one conviction that the element of love and compassion cannot be silenced:

                         "In peopled cities, as in waste untrod,
                         Its tones are mighty--'tis the voice of God."

        It's true religion and the foundation of civilization.

African Slavery; Its Status and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Europe

BY
HELI CHATELAIN
AFICAN TRAVELER AND PHILOLOGIST; AUTHOR OF "FOLK-TALES OF ANGOLA"

        It is my purpose to give in this paper a concise statement of the conclusions at which I have arrived, after fifteen years of theoretical and practical study, concerning; (1) Slavery and the slave traffic in Africa; (2) the efforts made by Europe for the extinction of these evils; (3) the duty of America in this mater.

        Disposing of so little time for the treatment of this vast and complicated subject, I am obliged to leave out all discussions of controversive points, all quotations from travelers, philanthropists, and statesmen; all pictures of native African slave life, descriptions of the harrowing scenes presented by slave raids and slave caravans; all thrilling adventures and heroic feats of the recent anti-slavery wars in Central Africa, all, that is, that appeals to the emotional part of man, and be content with giving an outline of the subject in its three-fold aspect.

        From time immemorial slavery has existed in Africa. The oldest records of the human race, the inscriptions of the Nile Valley, show us that negro slaves from the Sudan were then, as to-day, one of the principal articles of Egyptian trade.

        Neither the institution of slavery nor the slave-trade were introduced into Africa or forced upon the natives by Arabic Moslems or European Christians. At all times, so far as human knowledge goes, slavery has been a constituent element in the social order of Negro Africa. It is said of two or three African Negro tribes that they object to selling their own tribesmen, and oppose slave-dealing in a general way. But these exceptions only confirm the rule that slavery is the universal practice of native Africa. There the trade in human beings is considered just as honest as trade in any other merchandise.

        All those who want to work for the extinction of slavery in Africa should know from the start, that for one Arab or European slave-holder, slave-raider, or slave-dealer, there are hundreds of African slave-holders, slave-dealers, and slave-raiders. Therefore, in their efforts to conquer that monster they will have to face thousands of interested native opponents. This will be made clearer by a consideration of