Z JJEV. ALFRED T. [JRVANT. 



literary enlightenment in Eg-ypt and (Ireece. True, that was 

 an nnAvritten book ; but it existed all the same, writ large in 

 the traditions and practice of those peoples. Has it even 

 now ceased to exist ? Or may we not find fragments of the 

 ancient lore still extant among the primitive races of mankind, 

 wherewith to reconstruct in some degree the ancient pages ? 



The Kafirs of South Africa, upon the arrival of the white 

 man among them, were, I am convinced, in virtually the same 

 state of life and knowledge as they must have been in the days 

 when the ancient Egyptians first appeared on the Nile. This" 

 was a state of life so primitive of its kind that it scarcely 

 permitted any further reduction to a simpler standard, at any 

 rate for anything calling itself a human being. 



The Kafii^'s dwelling, merely a rough binding-together of 

 twigs and grass, marked only one step in advance of the cave- 

 dwellers. His single weapon, an indifferently made stabbing- 

 instrument, consisting of a crude iron blade affixed to the end 

 of a stick, indicated only the first emergence from the Stone 

 Age. His dress, of a single strip of skin covering the 

 pudenda, with absolutely no knowledge of any kind of clotli, 

 was the simplest advance on the fig-leaf. 



His acquaintance with only two, or at most three, species 

 of edible cereal [amaBele or Sorghum caf rorum, uNi/aicoti 

 or ? Penicillaria spicata, and nPoIco or Eleusine cora- 

 cana — the maize-plant having been introduced in compara- 

 tively recent times by the Portuguese), with not more than 

 half-a-dozen varieties of other cultivated vegetable food, and 

 all prepared for eating by the merest process of water-boiling, 

 exhibited a culinary art of the most rudimentary description. 

 His pottery was almost identical with that in vogue in north 

 Africa in the very earliest period of Egyptian history. 



This is how we found him two centuries back, and how, 

 for the most part, he still remains. Have we any reason to 

 believe he was more advanced than this 6000 years ago — he 

 could scarcely have been less ? There seems every reason to 

 believe that he was just where he is. Why, then, should we 

 sujDpose that he has made any considerable progress in his 



