Liberia <^ 



some Pygmy tribes at the present day). They may have only 

 known the effects of fire through the lightning constantly setting 

 the bush aflame in the Tornado season. After the bush fires 

 thus caused they would have revelled in the taste of roasted 

 meat by devouring the flesh of rats, snakes, lizards, birds, and 

 big beasts scorched or grilled by the flames that had come down 

 from heaven. The present writer has so frequently witnessed 

 the ignition of the African bush by flashes of lightning that he 

 can well realise how the Negro may have even been led into 

 the use of fire by keeping alive and feeding the remains of 

 a conflagration caused by the electric fluid. It is very possible 

 that he knew nothing about an artificial means of making fire 

 until he first came into contact with the pioneers of the white 

 race. They taught him later the use of metals and how to 

 obtain metallic ore by mining or smelting. 



They brought him all his domestic animals and birds not 

 of recent American or Indian origin ; and they likewise intro- 

 duced all the cultivated plants he knew before the discovery 

 of America further enriched his agriculture. It is a remarkable 

 fact that putting aside everything which has been introduced 

 into Africa since the discovery of America, all the previously 

 existing domestic beasts, birds and cultivated plants found 

 in the Dark Continent were of Asiatic or North-East African 

 origin. The Egyptians were, of course, the main benefactors 

 of Negro Africa. A pale reflex of their wonderful civilisation 

 had reached their Libyan brethren along the Mediterranean 

 littoral, and these did little more in the extreme west than 

 spread a faint imitation of Egyptian culture. 



It is to be supposed therefore that an unknown number 

 of thousands of years ago — at least three or four thousand — 

 there was a decided influx of Libyans along the northern banks 

 of the Niger and Senegal. Here they first traded and then 



894 



