^ Anthropology : Historical 



elements of native stock-keeping and agriculture are a testimony 

 to that constant indirect influence of the Caucasian on Tropical 

 Africa, an influence which has been going on for thousands of 

 years, and which has possibly saved the Negro from relapsing 

 into a life more bestial than human. 



When the Portuguese first reached the coast of Liberia in 



2,},7. EWES OF MANED SHEEP BROWSING IN THE 

 STREETS OF MONROVIA 



the fifteenth century, they seem to have found the Vai people, 

 a branch of the Mandingo stock, already established round about 

 Cape Mount. It is not, however, certain that the coast people 

 east of the St. Paul's River belonged to the Kru tribes which 

 now occupy that region : they may have been of the older 

 Kpwesi race. A short vocabulary recorded by an English 

 traveller in the middle of the sixteenth century in the vicinity 



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