138 KANSAS CITY RE VIE 14^ OF SCIENCE. 



and working the metal is amazing. Another curious feature of that curious re- 

 gion arrests the attention ; neither Livingston, Baker, Barth, Stanley, Speke, or 

 other traveler, so far as my reading extends, ever mentions having seen there a 

 wrought stone implement; and Dr. Livingston, in his last journal, remarks as a 

 strange fact, that in all his wanderings in Africa he had never found or seen a 

 stone artificially fashioned into a tool or weapon. 



Travelers and other writers of first-class respectability have asserted that no 

 stone age proper ever existed in Africa; some maintaining that its first inhabitants 

 were exotics who carried with them from their starting place the knowledge of 

 using iron, and others believing that the first negroes were autochthons who 

 learned at once to smelt hematite, because they found that ore was the most 

 abundant material and easiest of adaptation to their mechanical wants that their 

 country produced. 



In the course of certain investigations, relative to this subject, which for 

 some time have engaged my attention, I addressed one of several notes of inquiry 

 to Sir Samuel W. Baker, the renowned traveler and soldier, to which he prompt- 

 ly sent me the following courteous and characteristic answer : 



Sandford Orleigh, Newton Abbott, Dec. 25, 1881. 



My Dear Sir, — "In regard to your questions respecting a 'Stone Age' in 

 Central Africa, I have never seen any stone that has been chiseled or worked in 

 any manner of masonry. No vestiges of ancient masonry have ever been discov- 

 ered among the purely negro tribes, nor do I believe that negroes, either in an- 

 cient days, or in their present savage state, were in the habit of shaping stones 

 for dwellings. A stone age will only be represented in savage countries where 

 stones suitable for cutting purposes exist. Flints, obsidian, quartz, but especially 

 those which upon cleavage produce a cutting edge, are always adapted to the 

 points and heads of weapons, should they be present upon the locality. But in 

 some countries where such stones do not exist there never was (in my opinion) 

 and never would be a ' Stone Age.' 



" I have seen vast districts of alluvial soil in Africa where no stone, neither 

 any metal could be found. In those locahties there never was either a ' Stone ' 

 or an ' Iron Age,' but there was a ' Wooden Age ' existing at the period of my 

 experience, as their weapons were clubs, and spears, and arrows pointed with an 

 exceedingly hard wood. 



"Three or four hundred miles south of these districts the natives were good 

 blacksmiths because hematite iron ore abounded upon the surface. 



"These blacksmiths worked upon an anvil of a smooth block of hornblende 

 and they used a hammer of the same stone. 



" I never saw a stone weapon in Africa, neither did I see any other tools of 

 stone except those I have described. 



"There might be a 'Stone Age,' an 'Iron Age,' and a 'Wooden Age' ex- 

 isting at the same period within a few hundred miles of each other in any savage 

 country where communication was difficult and the peculiar conditions of the va- 



