Liberia ^ 



The Arab invasion of North and North Central Africa, 

 bringing with it the religion of Islam, was not to affect the 

 country of Liberia for many centuries, so that it can be passed 

 over for the present. Assuming Liberia to have been peopled 

 by something nearer to the genus Homo than the chimpanzee 

 two thousand five hundred years ago, the Negro inhabitants of 

 her jungles then may just have derived from their neighbours 

 on the west rumours of this wonderful visit of the white men 

 in their great winged boats ; and if, as I imagine, Carthaginian 

 enterprises of this description did not cease with the return of 

 Hanno, the Liberian savages of those distant days may have 

 traded directly or indirectly with the men of the Mediterranean 

 down to the beginning of the Christian era. But with the 

 absence of all information on the subject in the writings of 

 Roman or Greek geographers after the second century of the 

 Christian era, we are obliged to assume that a complete break 

 occurred in the intercourse between the Mediterranean peoples 

 and the Negroes of tropical West Africa from the second century 

 of the Christian era to about the twelfth century. By this time 

 the Libyan races (Tamasheq) of the northern bend of the Niger 

 had been Muhammadanised, and had begun to break up and 

 destroy the Negro or Negroid kingdoms along the course of 

 the Upper Niger. Some faint, faint wave of the turmoil they 

 created, some tiny infiltration of their commerce, may have 

 reached the northern and western regions of Liberia ; but 

 assuming Hanno's expedition to have reached the confines of 

 this country about two thousand five hundred years ago, we 

 have no distinct record of its having any further contact with 

 the Caucasian (Aryan, Mediterranean, Libyan) until the 

 traditional journeys of the Norman adventurers from Dieppe 

 in the fourteenth century of our present era. 



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