CHAPTER I. ANCIENT AND MODERN LIFE IN AFRICA. Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, So flourish these when those are past away. -Homer. THE human race is known to consist of different nations displaying considerable differences of external form and color, and speaking, in general, different languages. This has been the case since the commencement of written record. It is also ascertained that the external peculiarities of particular nations do not rapidly change. There is rather a tendency to a persistency of type in all lines of descent, in so much that a subordinate admixture of various types is usually obliterated in a few generations. Numerous as the varieties are, they have all been found classified under five leading ones: 1. The Caucasian or Indo-European, which extends from India into Europe and Northern Africa; 2. The Mongolian, which occupies Northern and Eastern Asia; 3. The Malayan, which extends from the Ultra-Gangetic Peninsula into the numerous islands of the South Sea and Pacific; 4. The Negro, chiefly confined to Africa; 5. The Aboriginal American. Each of these is distinguished by certain general features of so marked a kind as to give rise to a supposition that they have had distinct or independent origins. Of these peculiarities, color is the most conspicuous: the Caucasians are generally white, the Mongolians yellow, the Negroes black, and the Americans red. The opposition of two of these in particular, white and black, is so striking, that of them, at least, it seems almost necessary to suppose separate origins. Of late years, however, the whole of this question has been subjected to a rigorous investigation, and it has been successfully shown that the human race might have Lol une vriga from anything that can be inferred from external perlaris that er at Icther physiopertelan la lental nature One foot is at the very first It appears from this inquiry, logical characters are of a more than was at one time supposed. extremely startling: that there are nations such as the inhab. itants of Hindostan, known to be one in descent, which nevertheless contain groups of people of almost all shades and color. Some other facts, which I may ste in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa there are Negro nations that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes and Kafirs-whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the best European nations. While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa who have become as black as the other inhabitants. There are also facts which seem to show the possibility of a natural transition by generation from the black to the white complexion, and from the white to the black. True whites, (apart from Albinoes), are not unfrequently born among Negroes, and the tendency to this singularity is transmitted in families. There is at least one authentic instance of a set of perfectly black children being born to an Arab couple in whose ancestry no such blood had intermingled. This occurred in the valley of the Jordan, where it is remarkable that the Arab population in general, have flatter features, darker skins and coarser hair than any other tribes of the same nation. It was Mr. Lawrence's opinion that a pair, in which both parties were so distinguished as were the children of the Arab family in the valley of the Jordan, might be the progenitors of A new variety of the race who would be thus marked in all future time. It is not easy to surmise the causes which operate in producing such varieties. Perhaps they are simply types in *See Dr. Prichard's Researches into the Physical History of Man. nature, possible to be realized under certain appropriate conditions, but which conditions are such as altogether to elude notice. I might cite as examples of such possible types, the rise of whites amongst the Negroes, the occurrence of the family of black children in the valley of the Jordan, and the comparatively frequent birth of red-haired children amongst not only Mongolian and Malayan families, but amongst the Negroes. We are ignorant of the laws of variety production; but we see it going on as a principle in nature, and it is obviously favorable to the supposition that all the great families of men are of one stock. The same conclusion must be arrived at when we study the human figure, which differs much in the different races of mankind. We will mention here only one of the many causes that might be ascribed to the modification of the physical characteristics of these races; the style of living, which is ascertained to have a powerful effect in modifying the human figure in the course of generations--and this even in its osseous structure. About two hundred years ago a number of people were driven by a barbarous policy from the counties of Antrim and Down, in Ireland, towards the sea coast where they have ever since been settled, but in unusually miserable circumstances, even for Ireland; and the consequence is, that they exhibit peculiar features of the most repulsive kind-projecting jaws with large, open mouths, high cheek bones and bow legs, with an extremely diminutive stature. These, with an abnormal slenderness of the limbs, are the outward marks of a low and barbarous condition all over the world; it is particularly seen in the Australian aborigines. On the other hand, the beauty of the higher ranks in England is very remarkable, being in the main as clearly a result of good external conditions. "Coarse, unwholesome and ill-prepared food," says Buffon, "makes the human race degenerate." Some of the Negro nations of Africa, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes and Kafirs, as we have said, have features and limbs as elegant as any of the European nations, largely caused by the luxuries abundant in that tropical and prolific country. These are modifying agencies. There is, as has been said, a remarkable persistency in national features and forms, insomuch that a single individual, thrown into a family different from himself, is absorbed in it, and all trace of him lost after a few generations. And if true, in individuals, might it not be true as to a race of people, the weaker being lost in the stronger, or dominant race. The Colored Race in America might in time, others things being equal, be absorbed by the white race, especially if they were scattered evenly over the whole country; and even now we may detect the workings of this law in the modifying influence the commingling of the races has wrought. The traces of a common origin in all languages afford also a ground for presumption for the unity of the human race; but we cannot digress. A careful study of the early history of mankind conclusively shows that of one origin and one blood sprang all the nations of the earth. Plato tells us that in prehistoric time, a great and mighty people existed upon a continent in the Atlantic Ocean, and gathered his information thus: Solon, who was considered in Plato's time the wisest and greatest of the seven sages, left Athens for the period of ten years, and sojourned in Egypt, as fully explained by Plutarch, an Athenian Philosopher. Solon dwelt, so Plutarch tells us : "On the Canopian shore, by Niles' deep mouth. " That there he conversed on points of philosophy and history with the most learned of the Egyptian Priests. Plato says: "Solon was a relative and friend of my great-grandfather, Dropidas, as he himself says in several of his poems; and Dropidas told Cretias, my grand-father, who remembered and told us, that there were of old great and marvelous actions of the Athenians, which have passed into oblivian through time and the destruction of the human race. According to the tale, Atlantis, a great island in the Atlantic Ocean, comprising an area as great as Europe and Asia, existed in its glory about ten thousand years before the Christian Era. This vast em pire, which controlled the world at that time, in commerce, agriculture and mining, as well as in the glory of its military and naval power, was destroyed in one day by sesmic disturbances, and an earthquake sank the continent to the depth of the sea. However, many escaped on the ships (whose masts represented a forest, as they lay quietly anchored in their great harbors), and became scattered over the world. As we have stated, they were a great commercial people and traded with and migrated to all parts of the world. We find among the races that inhabited this lost continent, the African type; and the Colored Race in Africa are in all probability emigrants from Atlantis. As to the evidence that such a continent once existed, there is to all intelligent people, who have closely studied the matter, no reasonable doubt, and it has become to such, a theory developed into a fact. We can not, nor would it be proper in this work, to enter into a discussion of this kind, as it would take volumes to describe the nicely woven evidence; the discoveries that Geology has wrought; the Mythology and traditions of the ancients; the evidences which discovery has brought to light, and the analysis of the races of mankind. The reader, through research, must form his own views as to the existence of Atlantis. It is probable that in time the Negro race spread over all of Africa, and for aught we know, constituted the aboriginal inhabitants of that country. In a very remote time these people were driven out of Egypt, and subdued by bands of emigrants from Asia, and settled in Ethiopia, and gradually relapsed into semi-barbarism, in which state we find by recent discoveries that some of the tribes exist. The ancient history of this people is shrouded in obscurity. Only here and there we get a glimpse of their ancient greatness. The great loss to mankind by the burning of the Library at Alexandria, containing 700,000 volumes, can never be replaced, for by it is lost all history that antedated that of the Jews. Africa, like Europe and America, evidences a commingling of different stocks: the blacks are not all black, nor all woollyhaired; the Africans pass through a 11 des, from that of the |