20 NOETH-EAST AFRICA. 



National prejudice, for which historians fail to make due allowance, has given 

 rise to the widespread impression that the Africans have, so to say, taken no part 

 in the general work of civilisation. The first example which presents itself to the 

 mind is that of the king of Dahomey, celebrating the " great custom " by a general 

 massacre and the flooding of a lake with human blood ; or else we conjure up the 

 imao-e of those armed Monbuttu hordes which rush to battle grinding their teeth 

 and shouting " Meat ! Meat ! " But these frightful pictures are not an epitome of 

 the history of Africa. On the contrary, we are irresistibly attracted by the study 

 of our own social evolution to the Nile basin in North- East Africa. Looking back 

 through the long perspective of the past, far beyond the heroic times of Greece, 

 where was cradled our distinctly European culture, we ascend from century to 

 century to the remote ages when the Pyramids were raised, when the first plough- 

 share turned up the rich soil of the Nile delta. In Egypt are found the very 

 oldest documents of authentic history. So well established was its claim to the 

 foremost place in the development of civilisation, that the Greeks themselves 

 regarded the Nilotic region as the common cradle of mankind. Whatever be the 

 constituent ethnical elements of the nation to which we trace the germs of our 

 intellectual life, it is certain that their civilisation was of African origin. It had 

 its earliest seat in the narrow and fertile valley of the Nile, between the arid rock 

 and the still more arid sands of the wilderness. Through this mysterious stream, 

 flowing from the depths of the continent, were first established mutual intercourse 

 and civilising influences amongst the various regions of the old world. The north 

 African lands lying farther west were almost entirely excluded from any share in 

 this movement, at least before the introduction of the camel into the Dark 

 Continent, for till then they remained separated by the vast intervening desert 

 from the thickly peopled regions of Sudan. 



From the remotest antiquity the Africans, even beyond Egypt, took part in the 

 triumphs of mankind over nature. They were either stockbreeders or tillers of the 

 land, and to them we are indebted for many valuable plants and domestic animals. 

 From the African continent comes the variety of sorgho which, under the name of 

 durra, is cultivated from the banks of the Nile to the shores of the southern ocean, 

 and which is rivalled only by wheat and rice in its economic importance to 

 mankind. From Africa we have also received the date, for the Berbers and 

 Sudanese were probably the first to study the habit of this palm, which grew 

 spontaneously in their forests. According to Schweinfurth, the wild stock of the 

 Ethiopian banana, known to botanists by the name of musa ensete, gave rise to the 

 hundred varieties of the cultivated banana, whose fruit serves as a staple of food in 

 many American lands. To these three important vegetable species must also be 

 added the kaffa shrub, or coffee plant, so highly prized by a third of mankind for 

 the stimulating properties and delicious aroma of its berry. 



The civilised world is also indebted to the natives of Africa for several domestic 

 animals. Certain varieties of the dog, the cat, the pig of Senaar, and the ferret, 

 have been tamed by them ; the ass also is certainly of African origin, and to the 

 same source should perhaps be traced the goat, the sheep, and the ox. In recent 



