340 THE LAND OF THE LION 
which enables us to even guess the reason. If we except 
the Egyptians, no African people have written their name 
distinctly on any record of olden or modern time. No 
African race has risen to greatness. The splendours of 
Carthage were fed and sustained by the sea. Africa 
proper was in olden times, as in modern, a land ravaged 
by the gold seekers and slave hunter. 
Mohammedanism has failed in Africa to give the tribes 
that embraced it anything approaching expansive civiliza- 
tion. Mohammedanism does much for the individual, let so 
much be admitted at once. Mohammedanism makes him 
at least, in sort, brother man with all those who follow the 
Prophet, tends to make him cleaner, braver and more 
self-respecting. But there always it seems, fatally, to 
stop. It leaves him with no regard for his fellow man 
as a man. The Mohammedan looks down, and as long 
as he is true to his creed, must ever look down, on all 
people not of his creed. So he remains forever a pledged 
opponent of all that is progressive and uplifting in modern 
knowledge or government. If there was any real and 
lasting benefit coming to the native African by way of 
Mohammedanism reason would demand that all good people 
should rejoice. Many of the tribes near the coast have 
in large part professedly accepted the Prophet. But 
their’s seems to be a mere veneer of Mohammedanism. 
The slave-trading Arab and Somali was no doubt often 
a devoutly religious man after his kind, but he proved 
a poor sort of missionary, and so left behind him a trail 
of misery, blood, and death. I do not think, then, that 
those are prejudiced who say that there is likely to come 
to Africa from Mohammedanism no permanent uplift. 
It has had its great chance on that continent. It has 
worked its will with little let or hindrance for years and 
there is little to show for it. Africa is dark, very dark 
to-day, and very hopeless, except in those spots where 
