2S Proceedings of the Royal Irish AcaAcmjj. 



their most western territory, was founded one hundred and fifty years after 

 the Hegira, or about 765 A.D. 



The Songhois empire lasted nearly a thousand years, duruig which time it 

 was rilled over by tlu-ee dynasties, the Dia, the Sunni, and the Askia. 



There are other West African people who claim descent from the east. 

 The Haussas, a negi'o people, have a ti-adition of having come from the 

 shores of the Eed Sea ; and then- historian, the Sidtan Bello, says they were 

 descended from the Egyptians. Another people who claim Asiatic descent 

 are the Toruba, lower down the Niger, who claim to be descended fi'om 

 the Canaauites. 



By the valley of the Xile the ci\-ilizatiou of Egypt, Ethiopia, Arabia, and 

 the east has for coimtless ages conveyed an influence which, together with 

 the frequent immigiation of jieople from these coimtries, has powerfully 

 modified the negro races. The Hima, Songhois, and possibly others, have 

 invaded from the east ; wMle, along the west coast, hordes of Libyans, the 

 Fulla, and the Moors flowed into the territories of the blacks, intermingling 

 with and pushing them back. The ci\dlization of Crete, Carthage, Eome, and 

 the west, as well as influencing the Libyan emigrants, has reached the south by 

 the more indirect method of filtering through the wandering nomad tribes of 

 the desert, and by the caravan routes, which, in the coui'se of ages, have earned 

 many strange people across the desert. All these have brought something of 

 culture with them, so that in "West Africa of to-day we find strange remnants 

 of religions, and habits, symbols, and customs, for an explanation of which we 

 must look elsewhere. The meeting-place of the eastern and western 

 influences has, as we have already seen, in historic times, been upon the bend 

 of the Niger, where cixdlizations have risen and decayed, sending tribes of 

 mixed blood down towards the coast. 



South of the healthy uplands, the seat of the African civilizations, a range 

 of hills, backed bj' a swampy belt of densely wooded malarial jimgle, stretches 

 to the coast, which from immemorial antiquity was inhabited by a pagan race 

 who eat men — idolaters, magicians, and barbarians, who have always been 

 looked upon as only fit for slavery. 



The Ai'ab historians record that in this region there was a cannibal belt, 

 the inhabitants of which they named the Lem-Lems, Dem-Dems, and Gem- 

 Cxenis, and say they eat men. 



Barbot, iu the seventeenth ceutiuy, describes the natives of the coast 

 as gross pagans, worshipping snakes, consecrated trees, the sea, and much 

 given to human sacrifices on a vast scale. This was the fetish which was 

 diiven southwards from Ghana in the eleventh century, and at an early 

 period fi'om Gao, Daura, Kano, and other towns in the northern territories. 



