CAST-METAL WORK FROM BENIN, 69 
have been long in decadence.” The mystery that surrounds the makers of 
these wonderful art works, with all their intricate and elaborate details and 
undercutting, and the time and the place of their construction, cannot be 
resolved by the data we as yet possess. 
The probability is that the art may have been brought to the West Coast 
Hinterland by some European trader, prisoner, or resident, who, observing 
the skill of these people in the modelling of clay-figures, such as we know the 
Fantee women were in the habit of fashioning, may have instructed them how 
to do the same in wax, and having overlaid their model with clay, showed 
them how to reproduce it in metal; and the art may have flourished only 
during the lifetime, or residence there, of these artificers, or for only a short 
time after their departure. 
It is possible, on the other hand, that their knowledge of founding was 
derived from purely African sources. The ancient Egyptians knew how to 
cast in bronze, in which, however, there was no zine. 
The Benin “free men” and upper classes differ markedly from the slaves 
and lower orders, both in colour and features. Burton describes the latter as 
possessing negro features and a black skin, while the former have olive- 
coloured skins and tolerably regular features, a contrast, he notes, as great as 
between the English patrician and the wretched peasant of Western Treland. 
Lieutenant Vandeleur, D.S.O., in the account of his journey, in the early part of 
this year, to Nupe and Ilorin (given before the Royal Geographical Society in 
May last),* also observes that the rulers of all the Housa States in the Western 
Soudan are a race known as Fulas, ‘by far the most interesting people in 
Central Africa,” as Bowen calls them. “They are lighter in colour,” con- 
tinues Vandeleur, “taller and finer looking than the indigenous population. 
Their history is unknown, but they would seem to be an offshoot of the 
great race of Gallas in Somaliland and North-East Africa. Coming from the 
north, they gradually asserted their superiority, and conquered this country 
by means of superior military organisation and skill, and the havoc wrought 
by their cavalry.” In the account given in Ogilby’s Afri, from which I 
have already made several extracts, we are told that, in 1630, the King of 
Benin showed himself once a year to his people on horseback, “attended by 
three or four hundred Noblemen both on horseback and on foot,” while 
to-day neither horse nor trooper is known in that kingdom. 
Snake worship, also, according to Ratzel, existed among the Galla peoples ; 
and the Abyssinians, before their conversion to Christianity, are said to have 
adored a large serpent. In Benin, if there was not snake worship, it is 
evident there was snake veneration. 
Lieutenant Vandeleur mentions also the fact that the Fula cavalry had 
long-tailed ponies covered with gay trappings, and wearing high-peaked 
saddles. Among the ivory objects, acquired by the Mayer “Museum from 
Benin, is a fine royal, or chief's, staff-head, of some age, as the colour, polish 
and wear upon it indicate, representing some high dignitary, wearing a curious 
tall, conical head-dress, unlike any other I have seen among the Benin loot, 
coral collar, and bell-encircled robe, and seated in a peculiar, high-peaked 
saddle, on a long-tailed and richly caparisoned pony. 
Nupe and llorin, lying to the north of Benin, are provinces belonging to 
the Central Soudan, “a Mahommetan region stretching 3,000 miles ~ across 
Africa, from the frontiers of Abyssinia on the East to the frontiers of French 
Senegal on the West +”; while Benin belongs “ to the barbarous pagan states 
which line the Gulf of Guinea,” where the natives are of the lowest order of 
* Journ. R.G.S. x. p. 357 (1897). 
| Sir George Goldie, Journ. R.G.S. x. p. 371 (1897). 
