238 SOCIAL CONDITION OF AFRICA. 



iT»eetings, and the entire seclusion of females, produce an 

 effect wholly different from that of European society. In 

 the country, the Arab population is simple and patriarchal ; 

 yet unhappily no strangers to violence and plunder in their 

 very worst forms. 



The two races, thus strikingly distinguished, native and 

 foreign, Mohammedan and pagan, meet and mix in Cen- 

 tral Africa, on the banks of the Niger, and on the other 

 great rivers which water that region. Major Rennell con- 

 siders the stream now named as the boundary between the 

 Moors and negroes, as Pliny conceived it to separate the 

 Africans from the Ethiopians ; and the division, though 

 not rigorously correct, is yet, in a general sense, conformable 

 to fact. The Moors have made extensive conversions, and 

 have introduced all that is known of letters or writing into 

 the interior regions. Yet the lurid gleam thus shed over 

 benighted Africa serves little more than to deepen the sur- 

 rounding darkness. This sublime art is prized, not as the 

 principal means of enlightening and enlarging the human 

 mind, but as a tool of the magic art, — an instrument for 

 manufacturing charms and fetiches, to be sold at high prices 

 to the deluded natives. Only a few of the great sheiks and 

 doctors read even the Koran. The most approved mode of 

 imbibing its contents, as was formerly stated, is by tracing 

 the characters on a smooth board with a black substance, 

 then washing them off, and swallowing the water. Others, 

 having enclosed the Koran in a large silver case, bear it 

 constantly about, groaning under the burden, but expecting 

 from it the greatest spiritual benefits. 



Bigotry among these negro converts rises to a still higher 

 pitch ; and the future doom of the unbeliever is considered 

 even more assured than on the shores of the Mediterranean. 

 Meantime they subject him to the earthly miseries of foreigri 

 and distant bondage ; for, while it is unlawful to enslave 

 any true believer, the goods, the person, nay, the whole 

 property of the Caffre are considered as rightfully belonging 

 to the children of the prophet. This very circumstance 

 causes a secret abatement in that eager spirit of proselytism 

 which bums so fiercely among the adherents of the Moslem 

 creed. They cannot be insensible, that if the eyes of this 

 host of unbelievers were enlightened, they themselvea 

 would forfeit the ground on which they rest their only claim. 



