1872.] EPOCHS IN AFBICA. 213 



through the process of development. We may compare 

 cannibalism to the stone age, and the times of slavery t'> 

 the iron and bronze epochs — slavery is as natural a step in 

 human development as from bronze to iron. 



Whilst speaking of the stone age I may add that in Africa 

 I have never been fortunate enough to find one flint arrow- 

 head or any other flint implement, though I had my eyes 

 about me as diligently as any of my neighbours. No roads 

 are made ; no lands levelled ; no drains digged ; no quarries 

 worked, nor any of the changes made on the earth's surface 

 that might reveal fragments of the primitive manufacture of 

 stone. Yet but little could be inferred from the negative 

 evidence, were it not accompanied by the fact that flint does 

 not exist in any part south of the equator. Quartz might 

 have been used, but no remains exist, except the half-worn 

 millstones, and stones about the size of oranges, used for 

 chipping and making rough the nether millstone. Glazed 

 pipes and earthenware used in smelting iron, show that iron 

 was smelted in the remotest ages in Africa. These earthen- 

 ware vessels, and fragments of others of a finer texture, were 

 found in the delta of the Zambesi and in other parts in close 

 association with fossil bones, which, on being touched by the 

 tongue, showed as complete an absence of animal matter as 

 the most ancient fossils known in Europe. They were the 

 bones of animals, as hippopotami, water hogs, antelopes, 

 crocodiles, identical with those now livino- in the countrv. 

 These were the primitive fauna of Africa, and if vitrified 

 iron from the prodigious number of broken smelting fur- 

 naces all over the country was known from the remotest 

 times, the Africans seem to have had a start in the race, at 

 a time when our progenitors were grubbing up flints to save 

 a miserable existence by the game they might kill. Slave- 

 trading seems to have been coeval with the knowledge of 

 iron. The monuments of Egypt show that this curse has 

 venerable antiquity. Some people say, " If so ancient, why 



