Liberia '^ 



state in Nigeria — which arose and flourished in Nigeria before 

 the foundation of Timbuktu in the twelfth century, also rein- 

 forced West Africa with a foreign element, bringing more of 

 the blood, customs, and civilisation of Morocco and the East 

 into savage West Africa. 



A little of this northern strain, this faint trace of Caucasian 

 intermixture, trickled through the forests of Liberia till it 

 affected even some of the coast populations. As tribe upon 

 tribe pressed down from the open country on the north through 

 the forests to the sea-coast while that great hive of nations 

 on the Mandingo plateaux sent forth swarm after swarm of 

 emigrant peoples, the more bestial and degraded types of 

 Liberian Negroes were consumed (perhaps in more senses than 

 one), destroyed, driven into the sea, enslaved by the oncomers 

 from the north. What tiny element of the Caucasian there is 

 in the bodies of the modern Krumen, in the Vai, the Basa, 

 or the Gora may have been acquired before their forefathers 

 left the open country on the north to force their way through 

 the forests to the sea-coast, to the region where salt could be 

 obtained. 



The craving for salt was at the bottom of many of these 

 race migrations in Africa, the trend of which has been with 

 rare exceptions from north to south and east to west.' The 

 Negroes and Negroids who dwelt on the Mandingo plateaux, 

 about the sources of the Niger and the upper waters of the 

 Senegal, could obtain salt by traffic with the Negroids and 

 Caucasians south of the Sahara Desert, who worked the salt- 



' Very rarely, and recently, from west to east, and from tlie soutli northwards. 

 Race movements thus " against the grain " of Africa have been the Libyan invasions 

 of Morocco in the twelfth century, the Fula irruption into Central Africa in the 

 eighteenth century, the Zulu marches into Kastern Africa in the early nineteenth 

 century, and the Enropean invasions of Western and Southern Africa during the 

 last hundred years. 



898 



