i
:
}
|
nha Ny grater ae ps
4
i
i
%
og
‘
i
i
4
i
a inaimin A Sinton A
ae 2
4
,
|
*
i
Hy
es
A
i.
; it (S$ Ky fm heel neon (G7
/
be Ab 2620
HIS74R- LOB}
THE
MARTYRDOM OF MAN.
BY
WINWOOD) Ree ADE
LONDON:
TRUBNER & CO., 8 & 60 PATERNOSTER ROW.
1872.
All rights reserved.
PRHE ACE.
In 1862-3 I made a tour in Western Africa, and
afterwards desired to revisit that strange country with
the view of opening up new ground, and of studying
religion and morality among the natives. I was, how-
ever, unable to bear a second time the great expenses
of African travelling, and had almost given up the
hope of becoming an explorer, when I was introduced
by Mr Bates, the well-known Amazon traveller, and
Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, to one of
its Associates, Mr Andrew Swanzy, who !had long
desired to do something in the cause of African Dis-
covery. He placed unlimited means at my disposal,
and left me free to choose my own route. I travelled in
Africa two years (’68-’70), and made a journey which
is mentioned in the text. The narrative of my travels
will be published in due course ; I allude to them now |
in order to show that I have had some personal experi-
-ence of savages, and I wish also to take the first oppor-
tunity of thanking Mr Swanzy for his assistance, which
was given not only in the most generous but also in the
most graceful manner. With respect to the present
work, I commenced it intending to prove that Negro-
land or Inner Africa is not cut off from the, main-
stream of events as writers of philosophical history have
always maintained, but that it is connected by means
of Islam with the lands of the East, and also that it
lV PREFACE.
has, by means of the slave-trade, powerfully influenced
the moral history of Europe, and the political history
of the United States. But I was gradually led from the
history of Africa into writing the history of the world.
I could not describe the Negroland of ancient times
without describing Egypt and Carthage. From Egypt
I was drawn to Asia and to Greece, from Carthage I
was drawn to Rome. That is the first chapter. Next,
having to relate the progress of the Mahometans in
Central Africa, it was necessary for me to explain the
nature and origin of Islam ; but that religion cannot
be understood without a previous study of Christianity
and Judaism, and those religions cannot be understood
without a study of religion among savages. That is
the second chapter. Thirdly, I sketched the history
of the slave-trade, which took me back to the dis-
coveries of the Portuguese, the glories of Venetian
commerce, the Revival of the Arts, the Dark Ages, and
the Invasion of the Germans. Thus finding that my
outline of Universal History was almost complete, I
determined in the last chapter to give a brief summary
of the whole, filling up the parts omitted, and adding
to it the materials of another work suggested several
years ago by the “Origin of Species.” One of my reasons
for revisiting Africa was to collect materials for this
work, which I had intended to call “The Origin of
Mind.” However, Mr Darwin’s “Descent of Man”
has left little for me to say respecting the birth and in-
fancy of the faculties and affections. I, therefore, merely
follow in his footsteps, not from blind veneration for a
Great Master, but because I find that his conclusions are
confirmed by the phenomena of savage life. On certain
minor points I venture to dissent from Mr Darwin’s
views, as I shall show in my personal narrative, and
PREFACE. Vv
there is probably much in this work of which Mr
Darwin will disapprove. He must, therefore, not be
made responsible for all the opinions of his disciple. I
intended to have given my authorities in full, with notes
and elucidations, but am prevented from doing so by
want of space, this volume being already larger than it
should be. I wish therefore to impress upon the reader
that there is scarcely anything in this work which I can
claim as my own. I have taken not only facts and
ideas, but phrases and even paragraphs from other
writers. I cannot pay all my debts in full, but I must
at least do myself the pleasure to mention those authors
who have been my chief guides. On Egypt, Wilkin-
son, Rawlinson’s Herodotus, Bunsen; EHthiopiu or
Abyssinia, Bruce, Baker, Lepsius; Carthage, Heeren’s
African Nations, Niebuhr, Mommsen; Kast Africa,
Vincent’s Periplus, Guillain, Hakluyt Society’s Publica-
tions; Moslem Africa (Central), Park, Caillié, Den-
ham and Clapperton, Lander, Barth, Ibn Batuta, Leo
Africanus; Guinea and South Africa, Azurara, Barros,
Major, Hakluyt, Purchas, Livingstone; Assyria, Sir H.
Rawlinson, Layard; India, Max Muller, Weber ; Persia,
Heeren’s Asiatic Nations ; Ventral Asia, Burnes, Wolff,
Vambéry ;1 Arabia, Niebuhr, Caussin de Perceval,
Sprenger, Deutsch, Muir, Burckhardt, Burton, Pal-
grave ; Palestine, Dean Stanley, Renan, Dollinger,
Spinoza, Robinson, Neander; Greece, Grote, O. Miiller,
Curtius, Heeren, Lewes, Taine, About, Becker’s
Charicles ; Rome, Gibbon, Macaulay, Becker's Gallus;
Dark Ages, Hallam, Guizot, Robertson, Prescott,
Irving; Philosophy of History, Herder, Buckle, Comte,
Lecky, Mill, Draper; Science, Darwin, Lyell, Herbert
Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Vestiges of Creation, Wal-
lace, Tylor, and Lubbock. All the works of the above-
Vi PREFACE.
named authors deserve to be carefully read by the
student of Universal History, and in them he will find
references to the original authorities, and to all writers
of importance on the various subjects treated of in this
work. As for my religious sentiments, they are ex-
pressed in opposition to the advice and wishes of several
literary friends, and of the publisher, who have urged
me to alter certain passages which they do not
like, and which they believe will provoke against me
the anger of the public. Now, as a literary workman,
I am thankful to be guided by the knowledge of ex-
perts, and I bow to the decisions of the great public,
for whom alone I write, whom alone I care to please,
and in whose broad unbiassed judgment I place im-
plicit trust. But in the matter of religion, I listen to
no remonstrance, I acknowledge no decision save that
of the divine monitor within me. My conscience is
my adviser, my audience, and my judge. It bade me
write as I have written, without evasion, without dis-
guise ; it bids me to go on as I have begun, whatever
the result may be. If, therefore, my religious opinions
should be condemned, without a single exception, by
every reader of the book, it will not make me regret
having expressed them, and it will not prevent me from
expressing them again. It is my earnest and sincere
conviction that those opinions are not only true, but
also that they tend to elevate and purify the mind.
One thing at all events I know, that it has done me
good to write this book: and, therefore, I do not
think that it can injure those by whom it will be read.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
WAR.
Egypt,
Western Asia,
The Persians, .
. The Greeks,
The Macedonians,
Alexandria,
The Pheenicians,
Carthage and Rome,
Roman Africa,
The Arabs,
CHAPTER II.
RELIGION.
The Natural History of Religion,
The Israelites, .
The Jews,
The Prophets,
Character of Jesus,
The Christians,
Arabia,
Mecca,
Character of Mahomet,
Description of Africa, .
The Mahometans in Central Africa,
PAGE
1-48
48-55
55-62
62-83
83-94
94-106
106-111
111-153
153-161
161-163
164-182
182-198
198-214
214-221
221-228
228-249
250-255
255-258
258-269
270-286
287-296
Vill CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
LIBERTY.
Ancient Europe,
Invasion of the Germans,
The Castle,
The Town,
The Church,
Venice,
Arab Spain,
The Portuguese Discoverers,
The Slave Trade,
Abolition in Europe, .
Abolition in America, :
Materials of Human History, .
CHAPTER IV.
INTELLECT.
Animal Period of the Earth,
Origin of Man, and Early History,
Summary of Universal History,
The Future of the Human Race,
The Religion of Reason and of Love, .
PAGE
298-300
300-301
301-306
307-309
309 314
316-319
320-324
225-341
341-348
348-369
370-386
388-394
395-418
418-463
463-502
502-515
515-544
CHAPTER I.
WAR.
THE land of Egypt is six hundred miles long, and is
bounded by two ranges of naked limestone hills which
sometimes approach, and sometimes retire from each
other, leaving between them an average breadth of
seven miles. On the north they widen and disappear,
giving place to a marshy meadow plain which extends
to the Mediterranean Coast. On the south they are
no longer of limestone, but of granite; they narrow to
a point; they close in till they almost touch; and
through the mountain gate thus formed, the river Nile
leaps with a roar into the valley, and runs due north
towards the sea.
In the winter and spring it rolls a languid stream
through a dry and dusty plain. But in the summer
an extraordinary thing happens. The river grows
troubled and swift; it turns red as blood, and then
green ; it rises, it swells, till at length overflowing its
banks, it covers the adjoining lands to the base of the
hills on either side. The whole valley becomes a lake
from which the villages rise like islands, for they are
built on artificial mounds.
This catastrophe was welcomed by the Egyptians
with religious gratitude and noisy mirth. When their
fields had entirely disappeared they thanked the gods
and kept their harvest-home. The tax-gatherers ©
measured the water as if it were grain, and announced
A e
2, THE WATER HARVEST.
what the crops and the budget of the next year
would be. Gay barges with painted sails conveyed
the merry husbandmen from village to village, and
from fair to fair. It was then that they had their
bull fights, their boat tournaments, their wrestling
matches, their bouts at single-stick and other athletic
sports. It was then that the thimble-riggers and jack-
puddings, the blind harpers and nigger minstrels from
Central Africa amused the holiday-hearted crowd.
It was then that the old people sat over draughts
and dice-box in the cosy shade, while the boys played
at mora, or pitch and toss, and the girls at a game of
ball, with forfeits for the one who missed a catch. It
was then that the house-father bought new dolls for
the children, and amulets, or gold ear-rings, or neck-
laces of porcelain bugles for the wife. It was then
that the market stalls abounded with joints of
beef and venison, and with geese hanging down in
long rows, and with chickens hatched by thousands
under heaps of dung. Salted quails, smoked fish,
date sweetmeats, doora cakes and cheese; leeks, garlic,
cucumber and onions; lotus seeds mashed in milk,
roasted stalks of papyrus, jars of barley beer and palm
wine, with many other kinds of food were sold in
unusual plenty at that festive time.
It was then also that the white robed priests, bear-
ing the image of a god, and singing hymns, marched
with solemn procession to the water side, and cast in
a sacrifice of gold. For the water which had thus
risen was their life. Egypt is by nature a rainless
desert, which the Nile, and the Nile only, converts
into a garden every year.
Far far away in the distant regions of the south, in
the deep heart of Africa, lie two inland seas. These
THE SOURCES OF THE NILE. 3
are the head waters of the Nile; its sources are in the
sky. For the clouds, laden with waters collected out
of many seas, sail to the African equator, and there
pour down a ten months’ rain. This ocean of falling
water is received on a region sloping towards the north,
and is conveyed by a thousand channels to the vast
rocky cisterns which form the Speke and Baker Lakes.
They, filled and bursting, cast forth the Nile, and
drive it from them through a terrible and thirsty
land. The hot air lies on the stream and laps it as it
flows. The parched soil swallows it with open pores ;
but ton after ton of water is supplied from the gigantic
reservoirs behind, and so it is enabled to cross that
vast desert, which spreads from the latitude of Lake
Tchad to the borders of the Mediterranean Sea.
The existence of the Nile is due to the Nyanza
Lakes alone, but the inundation of the river has a
distinct and separate cause. In that phenomenon the
lakes are not concerned.
Between the Nile and the mouth of the Arabian
Gulf are situated the Highlands of Abyssinia, rising
many thousand feet above the level of the sea, and
intercepting the clouds of the Indian Ocean in their
flight towards the north. From these mountains, as
soon as the rainy season has set in, two great rivers
come thundering down their dried up beds, and rush
into the Nile. The main stream is now forced im-
petuously along; in the Nubian desert its swelling
waters are held in between walls of rock ; as soon as
it reaches the low-lying lands of Egypt it naturally
overflows.
The Abyssinian tributaries do even more than
this. The waters of the White Nile are transparent
and pure; but the Atbara and Blue Nile bring down
4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEISURE.
from their native land a black silt, which the flood
strews over the whole valley as a kind of top-dressing
or manure. On that rich and unctuous mud, as soon
as the waters have retired, the natives cast their seed.
Then their labours are completed; no changes of
weather need afterwards be feared, no anxious looks
are turned towards the sky; sunshine only is required
to fulfil the crop, and in Egypt the sun is never
covered by a cloud.
Thus, were it not for the White Nile, the Abys-
sinian rivers would be drunk up by the desert ; and
were it not for the Abyssinian rivers, the White Nile
would be a barren stream. The River is created by
the rains of the equator; the Land by the tropical
rains condensed in one spot by the Abyssinian
mountain pile.
In that fair Egyptian valley, fattened by a foreign
soil, brightened by eternal sunshine, watered by ter-
restial rain, the natives were able to obtain a year’s
food in return for a few days’ toil, and so were pro-
vided with that wealth of time which is essential for
a nation’s growth.
A people can never rise from low estate as long as
they are engrossed in the painful struggle for daily
bread. On the other hand, leisure alone is not suffi-
cient to effect the self-promotion of men. The savage
of the primeval forest burns down a few trees every
year, his women raise an easy crop from the ashes
which mingle with the soil. He basks all day in the
sunshine, or prostrates himself in his canoe with his
arms behind his head and a fishing line tied to his big
toe.. When the meat-hunger comes upon him he
takes up bow and arrow and goes for a few days into the
bush. His life is one long torpor, with spasms of
AGRICULTURAL MONOGAMY. o
activity. Century follows century, but he does not
change. Again, the shepherd tribes roam from pasture
to pasture: their flocks and herds yield them food and
dress, and houses of hair, as they cail their tents.
They have little work to do: their time is almost
entirely their own. They pass long hours in slow
conversation, in gazing at the heavens, in the sensuous
passive oriental reverie. The intellectual capacities of
such men are by no means to be despised, as those
who have lived among them are aware. They are
skilful interpreters of nature’s language, and of the
human heart: they compose beautiful poems; their
religion is simple and sublime; yet time passes on,
and they do not advance. The Arab sheik of the
present day lives precisely as Abraham did three
thousand years ago; the Tartars of central Asia are
the Scythians whom Herodotus described.
It is the first and indispensable condition of human
progress that a people shall be married to a single
land: that they shall wander no more from one region
to another, but remain fixed and faithful to their soil.
Then if the Earth-wife be fruitful, she will bear them
children by hundreds and by thousands; and then,
Calamity will come and teach them by torture to invent.
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the
rest of the world by sand and sea. They were
roated in their valley; they lived entirely upon its
fruits; and happily these fruits sometimes failed.
Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat,
they would have remained always in the semi-savage
- state. ;
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suf-
- fered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient
world where food was so abundant and so cheap.
6 THE LAW OF MASSACRE.
Not only did the land produce enormous crops of
corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by
the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome
and nourishing aquatic plants ; and on the borders of
the desert, thick groves of date palms which love a
neutral soil, embowered the villages, and formed live
granaries of fruit.
But however plentiful food may be in any country,
the population of that country, as Malthus discovered,
will outstrip it in the long run. If food is unusually
cheap, population will increase at an unusually rapid
rate, and there is no limit to its ratio of increase ; no
limit, that is to say, except disease and death. On
the other hand, there is a limit to the amount of food
that can be raised, for the basis of food is land, and
land is a fixed quantity. Unless some discovery is
made, by means of which provisions may be manu-
factured with as much facility as children, the whole
earth will some day be placed in the same predica-
ment as the island in which we live, which has out-
grown its food-producing power, and is preserved from
starvation only by means of foreign corn.
At the time we speak of Egypt was irrigated by
the Nile in a natural, and therefore imperfect manner.
Certain tracts were overflooded, others were left com-
pletely dry. The valley was filled with people to the
brim. When it was a good Nile, every ear of corn,
every bunch of dates, every papyrus stalk and lotus
root, was pre-engaged. There was no waste and no
surplus store. But sometimes a bad Nile came.
The bread of the people depended on the amount
of inundation, and that on the tropical rains, which
vary more than is usually supposed. If the rainy
season in the Abyssinian highlands happened to be
GOD MADE ALL MEN UNEQUAL. 7
slight, the river could not pay its full tribute of earth
ana water to the valley below; and if the rainfall was
unusually severe, houses were swept away, cattle were
drowned, and the water, instead of returning at the
usual time, became stagnant on the fields. In either
case, famine and pestilence invariably ensued. The
plenty of ordinary years, like a baited trap, had pro-
duced aluxuriance of human life, and the massacre
was proportionally severe. Encompassed by the wil-
derness, the unfortunate natives were unable to escape ;
they died in heaps; the valley resembled a field of
battle ; each village became a charnel-house ; skeletons
sat grinning at street corners, and the winds clattered
among dead men’s bones. A few survivors lingered
miserably through the year, browsing on the thorny
shrubs of the desert, and sharing with the vultures
their horrible repast. |
God made all men equal is a fine-sounding phrase,
and has also done good service in its day ; but it is
not a scientific fact. On the contrary, there is nothing
so certain as the natural inequality of men. Those
who outlive hardships and sufferings which fall on all
alike owe their existence to some superiority, not only
of body, but of mind. It will easily be conceived that
among such superior minded men there would be some
who, stimulated by the memory of that which was
- past, and by the fear of that which might return,
would strain to the utmost their ingenuity to control
and guide the fickle river which had hitherto sported
_ with their lives.
We shall not attempt to trace out their inventions
step by step. Humble in its beginnings, slow in its
improvements, the art or science of Hydraulics was
finally mastered by the Egyptians, They devised a
8 FAMINE THE MOTHER OF ASTRONOMY.
system of dikes, reservoirs, and lock-canals, by means
of which the excessive waters of a violent Nile were
turned from the fields and stored up to supply the
wants of a dry year; thus also the precious fluid was
conveyed to tracts of land lying above the level of the
river, and was distributed over the whole valley with
such precision that each lot or farm received a just
and equal share. Next, as the inundation destroyed
all landmarks, Surveying became a necessary art in
order to settle the disputes which broke out every
year. And as the rising of the waters was more and
more carefully observed, it was found that its com-
mencement coincided with certain aspects of the stars.
This led to the study of Astronomy and the discovery
of the solar year. Agriculture became a mathematical
art: it was ascertained that so many feet of water
would yield so many quarters of corn ; and thus, be-
fore a single seed was sown, they could count up the
harvest as correctly as if it had been already gathered in.
A natural consequence of all this was the separation
of the inventor class, who became at first the coun-
sellors, and afterwards the rulers of the people. But
while the men of mind were battling with the forces
of Nature, a contest of another kind was also going
on. Those who dwell on the rich banks of a river
flowing through desert lands are always liable to be ©
attacked by the wandering shepherd hordes who resort
to the waterside in summer, when the wilderness pas-
ture is dried up. There is nothing such tribes desire
better than to conquer the corn-growing people of the
river lands, and to make them pay a tribute of grain
when the crops are taken in. The Egyptians, as soon
as they had won their harvests from the flood, were
obliged to defend them against the robbers of the
CRUELTY THE NURSE OF CIVILIZATION. 9
desert, and out of such wars arose a military caste.
These allied themselves with the intellectual caste,
who were also priests, for among the primitive nations
religion and science were invariably combined. In
this manner the bravest and wisest of the Egyptians
rose above the vulgar crowd, and the nation was
divided into two great classes, the rulers and the
ruled.
Then oppression continued the work which war and
famine had begun. The priests announced, and the
armies executed, the divine decrees. The people were
reduced to servitude. The soldiers discovered the gold
and emerald mines of the adjoining hills, and filled
their dark recesses with chained slaves and savage
overseers. They became invaders; they explored dis-
tant lands with the spear. Communications with Syria
and the fragrant countries at the mouth of the Red
Sea, first opened by means of war, were continued by
means of commerce. Foreign produce became an
element of Egyptian life. The privileged classes found
it necessary to be rich. Formerly the priests had
merely salted the bodies of the dead; now a fashion-
able corpse must be embalmed at an expense of two
hundred and fifty pounds, with asphalt from the Dead
Sea and spices from the Somauli groves ; costly incense
must be burnt on the altars of the gods; aristocratic
heads must recline on ivory stools; fine ladies must
glitter with gold ornaments and precious stones, and
must be served by waiting-maids and pages with woolly
hair and velvety black skins. War and agriculture
were no longer sufficient to supply these patrician
wants. It was no longer sufficient that the people
should feed on dates and the coarse doura bread, while
the wheat which they raised was sold by their masters
10 JESUITICAL NATURE.
for gew-gaws and perfumes. Manufactures were estab-
lished ; slaves laboured at a thousand looms ; the linen
goods of Egypt became celebrated throughout the
world. Laboratories were opened; remarkable dis-
coveries were made. The Egyptian priests distilled
brandy and sweet waters. They used the blow-pipe,
and were far advanced in the chemical processes of art.
They fabricated glass mosaics, and counterfeited precious
stones and porcelain of exquisite transparency and
delicately blended hues. With the fruits of these
inventions they adorned their daily life, and attracted
into Egypt the riches of other lands.
Thus when Nature selects a people to endow them
with glory and with wealth her first proceeding is to
massacre their bodies, her second, to debauch their
minds. She begins with famine, pestilence, and war ;
next, force and rapacity above; chains and slavery
below. She uses evil as the raw material of good ;
though her aim is always noble, her earliest means
are base and cruel. But, as soon as a certain point is
reached, she washes her black and bloody hands, and
uses agents of a higher kind. Having converted the
animal instinct of self-defence into the ravenous lust of
wealth and power, that also she transforms into
ambition of a pure and lofty kind, At first knowledge
is sought only for the things which it will buy, the
daily bread indispensable to life; and those trinkets
of body and mind which vanity demands. Yet those low
desires do not always and entirely possess the human
soul, Wisdom is like the heiress of the novel who is
at first courted only for her wealth, but whom the
fortune-hunter learns afterwards to love for herself
alone. ;
At first sight there seems little in the arts and
LABOUR LOVED. 11
sciences of Egypt which cannot be traced to the en-
lightened selfishness of the priestly caste. For, in the
earlier times it was necessary for the priests to labour
unceasingly, to preserve the power which they had
usurped. It was necessary to overawe not only the
people who worked in the fields, but their own
dangerous allies, the military class; to make religion
not only mysterious, but magnificent: not only to
predict the precise hour of the rising of the waters, or
the eclipses of the moon, but also to adopt and nurture
the fine arts, to dazzle the public with temples, monu-
ments, and paintings. Above all, it was necessary to
prepare a system of government which should keep the
labouring classes in subjection, and yet stimulate them
to labour indefatigably for the state, which should
strip them of all the rewards of industry and yet keep
that industry alive. Expediency will therefore account
for much that the Egyptian intellect produced ; but it
certainly will not account for all. The invention of
hieroglyphics is alone sufficient to prove that higher
motives were at work than mere political calculation
and the appetite of gold. For writing was an inven-
tion which at no time could have added in a palpable
manner to the wealth or power of the upper classes,
and which yet could not have been finished to a system
without a vast expenditure of time and toil It
could not have been the work of a single man, but of
several labouring in the same direction, and in its
early beginnings must have appeared as unpractical, as
truly scientific to them, as the study of solar chemistry
and the observation of the double stars to us. Besides,
the intense and faithful labour which is conspicuous in
all the Egyptian works of art could only have been in-
spired by that enthusiasm which belongs to noble minds.
12 THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE.
We may fairly presume that Egypt once possessed
its chivalry of the intellect, its heroic age, and that
the violent activity of thought generated by the love
of life, and developed by the love of power was
raised to its full zenith by the passion for art and
science, for the beautiful and the true.
At first the Nile valley was divided into a number
of independent states, each possessing its own corpora-
tion of priests and soldiers, its own laws and system
of taxation, its own tutelary god and shrine ; but each
a member of one body, united by the belief in one
religion, and assembling from time to time to worship
the national gods in an appointed place. There,
according to general agreement, ratified by solemn
oaths, all feuds were suspended, all weapons laid aside.
There also, under the shelter of the sanctuary, property
was secure, and the surplus commodities of the various
districts could be conveniently interchanged. In such
a place, frequented by vast crowds of pilgrims and
traders, a great city would naturally arise ; and such it
seems probable was the origin of Thebes.
But Egypt, which possesses a simple undivided form,
and which is nourished by one great arterial stream,
appears destined to be surmounted by a single head,
and we perceive in the dim dawn of history a revolu-
tion taking place, and Menes, the Egyptian Charle-
magne, founding an empire upon the ruins of local
governments, and inspiring the various tribes with
the sentiment of nationality. Thebes remained the
sacred city ; but a new capital, Memphis, was built at
the other end of the valley, not far from the spot
where Cairo now stands.
By degrees the Egyptian empire assumed a con-
solidated form. A regular constitution was established
THE ESTATES. 13
and a ritual prescribed. The classes were organised
in a more effective manner, and were not at first too
strictly fixed. All were at liberty to intermarry,
excepting only the swineherds, who were regarded as
unclean. The system of the government became
masterly, and the servitude of the people became com-
plete. Designs of imperial magnitude were accom-
plished, some of them gigantic but useless, mere
exploits of naked human strength ; others were struc-
tures of true grandeur and utility. The valley was
adorned with splendid monuments and_ temples;
colossal statues were erected, which rose above the
houses, like the towers and spires of our cathedral
towns. An army of labourers was employed against
the Nile. The course of the mighty stream was
altered; its waters were snatched from its bosom,
and stored up in the Lake Meeris, an artificial basin,
‘hollowed out of an extensive swamp, and thence were
conducted by a system of canals into the neighbouring
desert, which they changed to smiling fields. For the
Sahara can always be revived, It is barren only because
it receives no rain.
The Empire consisted of three estates; the Monarch,
the Army, and the Church. There were in theory no
limits to the power of the king. His authority was
derived directly from the gods. He was called the
Sun ; he was the head of the religion and the state ;
he was the supreme judge and lawgiver; he com-
manded the army and led it to war. But in reality
his power was controlled and reduced to mere pagean-
try by a parliament of priests. He was elected by
the military class; but as soon as he was crowned he
was initiated into the mysteries and subjected to the
severe discipline of the holy order. No slave or
14 KING.
hireling might approach his person: the lords in
waiting, with the state parasol, and the ostrich feather
fans, were princes of the blood; his other attendants
were invariably priests. The royal time was filled
and measured by routine: laws were laid down in
the holy books for the order and nature of his occupa-
tions. At daybreak he examined and despatched his
correspondence ; he then put on his robes and attended
divine service in the temple. Extracts were read from
those holy books which contained the sayings and
actions of distinguished men, and these were followed
by a sermon from the High Priest. He extolled
the virtues of the reigning sovereign, but criticised
severely the lives of those who had preceded him ; a
post mortem examination to which the king knew
that he would be subjected in his turn.
He was forbidden to commit any kind of excess : he
was restricted to a plain diet of veal and goose, and to
a measured quantity of wine. The laws hung over
him day and night; they governed his public and
private actions ; they followed him even to the recesses
of his chamber, and appointed a set time for the
embraces of his queen. He could not punish a single
person except in accordance with the code ; the judges
took oath before the king that they would disobey the
king if he ordered them to do anything contrary to
law. The ministry were responsible for the actions of
their master, and they guarded their own safety. They
made it impossible for him to forfeit that reverence
and affection which the ignorant and religious always
entertain for their anointed king. He was adored
as a god, when living, and when he died he was
mourned by the whole nation as if each man had lost
a well-beloved child. During seventy-two days the
ARMY. 15
temples were closed ; lamentations filled the air: and
the people fasted, abstaining from flesh and wine,
cooked food, ointments, baths, and the company of
their wives.
The Army appears to have been severely disciplined.
To run twenty miles before breakfast was part of the
ordinary drill. The amusements of the soldiers were
athletic sports and martial games. Yet they were
not merely fighting men: they were also farmers;
each warrior received from the state twelve acres of
choice land: these gave him a solid interest in the
prosperity of the fatherland and in the maintenance of
civil peace.
The most powerful of the three estates was un-
doubtedly the Church. In the priesthood were in-
cluded not only the ministers of religion, but also the
whole civil service and the liberal professions. Priests
were the royal chroniclers and keepers of the records,
the engravers of inscriptions, physicians of the sick
and embalmers of the dead; lawyers and lawgivers,
sculptors and musicians. Most of the skilled labour
of the country was under their control. In their hands
were the linen manufactories and the quarries between
the Cataracts. Even those posts in the army which
required a knowledge of arithmetic and penmanship
were supplied by them: every general was attended
by young priest scribes, with papyrus rolls in their
hands and reed pencils behind their ears. The clergy
preserved the monopoly of the arts which they had
invented ; the whole intellectual life of Egypt was in
them. It was they who, with their Nilometers, took
the measure of the waters, proclaimed good harvests
to the people, or bade them prepare for hungry days.
It was they who studied the diseases of the country,
16 CHURCH.
compiled a Pharmacopeia, and invented the signs
which are used in our prescriptions at the present day.
It was they who judged the living and the dead, who
enacted laws which extended beyond the grave, who
issued passports to paradise, or condemned to eternal
infamy the memories of men that were no more. -
Their power was immense ; but it was exercised
with justice and discretion: they issued admirable
laws, and taught the people to obey them by the
example of their own humble, self-denying lives.
Under thetutelage of these piousand enlightened men,
the Egyptians became a prosperous, and also a highly
moral people. The monumental paintings reveal their
whole life, but we read in them no brutal or licentious
scenes. Their great rivals, the Assyrians, even at a.
later period, were accustomed to impale and flay
alive their prisoners of war. The Egyptians granted
honours to those who fought gallantly against them.
The penalty for the murder of a slave was death ; this
law exists without parallel in the dark slavery annals
both of ancient and of modern times. The pardoning
power in cases of capital offence was a cherished pre-
rogative of royalty with them, as with us; and with
them also as with us, when a pregnant woman was con-
demned to death the execution was postponed until
after the birth of the guiltless child. It is a sure cri-
terion of the civilization of ancient Egypt that the
soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that
the private citizens did not carry them at all. Women
were treated with much regard. They were allowed to
join their husbands in the sacrifices to the gods; the
bodies of man and wife were united in the tomb.
When a party was given, the guests were received by
the host and hostess seated side by side in a large arm-
TRIAL OF THE DEAD. 17
chair. In the paintings their mutual affection is por-
trayed. Their fond manners, their gestures of endear-
ment, the caresses which they lavish on their children,
form sweet and touching scenes of domestic life.
Crimes could not be compounded as in so many
other ancient lands by the payment of a fine. The
man who witnessed a crime without attempting to
prevent it, was punished as partaker. The civil laws
were administered in such a manner that the poor
could have recourse to them as well asthe rich. The
judges received large salaries that they might be placed
above the temptation of bribery, and might never dis-
grace the image of Truth which they wore round their
necks, suspended on a golden chain.
But most powerful of all, to preserve the morality of
the people by giving a tangible force to public opinion,
and by impeaching those sins against society which no
legal code can touch, was that sublime police insti-
tution, the Trial of the Dead.
When the corpse had been brought back from the
embalming house, it was encased in a sycamore coffin
covered with flowers, placed in a sledge and drawn by
oxen to the sacred lake. The hearse was followed by
the relations of the deceased, the men unshorn and
casting dust upon their heads, the women beating their
breasts and singing mournful, hymns. On the banks
of the lake sat forty-two judges in the shape of a cres-
cent; a great crowd was assembled; in the water
floated a canoe, and within it stood Charon the ferry-
man awaiting the sentence of the chief judge. On the
other side of the lake lay a sandy plain, and beyond it
a range of long low hills, in which might be discerned
’ the black mouths of the caverns of the dead.
It was in the power of any man to step forward
B
18 THE PAINTED TOMB.
and accuse the departed before the body could be
borne across. If the charge was held to be proved,
the body was denied burial in the consecrated ground,
‘and the crowd silently dispersed. If a verdict of not
guilty was returned, the accuser suffered the penalty
of the crime alleged, and the ceremony took its course.
The relatives began to sing with praises the biography
of the deceased ; they sang in what manner he had
been brought up from a child till he came to man’s
estate, how pious he had been towards the gods; how
righteous he had been towards men. And if this was
true, if the man’s life had indeed been good, the crowd
joined in chorus, clapping their hands and sang back
in return that he would be received into the glory of
the just. Then the coffin was laid in the canoe, and
the silent ferryman plied his oar, and a priest read the
service of the dead : and the body was deposited in
the cemetery caves. If he was a man of rank he
was laid in a chamber of his own, and the sacred
artists painted on the walls an illustrated catalogue of
his possessions, the principal occupations of his life,
and scenes of the society in which he moved. For
the priests taught, that since life is short and death is
long, man’s dwelling house is but a lodging, and his
eternal habitation is the tomb. Thus the family
vault of the Egyptian was his picture gallery, and
thus the manners and customs of this singular people
have, like their bodies, been preserved through long
ages, by means of religious art.
There are also still existing on the walls of the
temples, and in the grotto tombs, grand historical
paintings which illuminate the terse chronicles en-
graved upon the granite. Among these may be
remarked one subject in particular, which appears
THE CHILDREN OF THE DESERT. 19
to have been a favourite with the artist and the public,
for it again and again recurs. The Egyptians, distin-
guished always by their smooth faces and shaven
heads, are pursuing an enemy with long beards and
flowing robes, who are surrounded by flocks and
herds. The Egyptians here show no. mercy, they
appear alive with fury and revenge. Sometimes the
"victor is depicted with a scornful air, his foot placed
upon the ueck of a prostrate foe; sometimes he is
piercing the body through and through with a spear.
Certain sandals have also been discovered, in which
the figure of the same enemy is painted on the inner
sole, so that the foot trod upon the portrait when the
sandal was put on.
Those bearded men had inflicted on Egypt long
years of dreadful disaster and disgrace. They were
the Bedouins of the Arabian peninsula; a pastoral
race, who wandered eternally in a burning land, each
tribe or clan within an orbit of its own. When they
met they fought, the women uttering savage cries, and
cursing their husbands if they retreated from the foe.
Accustomed to struggle to the death for a handful of
withered grass, or for a little muddy water at the
bottom of a well, what a rich harvest must Egypt
have appeared to them! In order to obtain it they
were able to suspend all feuds, to take an oath of
alliance, and to unite into a single horde. They de-
scended upon their prey and seized it at the first
swoop. ‘There does not appear to have been even one
great battle, and this can be explained, if as is pro-
bable enough, the Egyptians before that invasion had
never seen a horse.
The Arab horse, or rather mare, lived in her mas-
ter’s tent, and supped from the calabash of milk, and
20 THE HORSE OF WAR.
lay down to sleep with the other members of the
family. She was the playmate of the childrén; on
her the cruel, the savage Bedouin lavished the one
tender feeling of his heart. He treasured up in his
mind her pedigree as carefully as his own; he com-
posed songs in honour of his beloved steed ;_ his friend,
his companion, his ally. He sang to her of the
gazelles which they had hunted down, and of the battles’
which they had fought together; for the Arab horse
was essentially a beast of war. When the signal was
given for the charge, when the rider loudly yelling,
couched his spear, she snorted and panted and
bounded in the air. With tail raised and spreading
to the wind, with neck beautifully arched, mane flap-
ping, red nostrils dilating, and glaring eyes, she rushed
like an arrow into the midst of the melée. Though
covered with wounds she would never turn restive or
try to escape, but if her master was compelled to take
to flight she would carry him till she dropped down
dead.
It is quite possible that when the mounted army
appeared in the river plain the inhabitants were para-
lysed with fright, and believed them to be fabulous
animals, winged men. Be that as it may, the conquest
was speedy and complete; the imperial Memphis was
taken ; Egypt was enslaved ; the king, and his family
and court, were compelled to seek a new home across
the sandy seas,
On the south side of the Nubian desert was the
land of Ethiopia, the modern Soudan, which had been
conquered by the Egyptians, and which they used as
an emporium in their caravan trade with Central
Africa and the shores of the Red Sea. But it could
be reached only by means of a journey which is not
pita eile op
THE TERRIBLE SAHARA. ali
without danger at the present day, and which must
have been inexpressibly arduous at a time when the
camel had not been introduced.
The Nile, it is true, flows through this desert, and
joins Ethiopia to Egypt with a silver chain, But from
the time of its leaving Soudan until it reaches the
black granite gate which marks the Egyptian frontier,
it is confined within a narrow, crooked, hollow way.
Navigation is impossible, for its bed is continually
broken up by rocks, and the stream is walled in; it
cannot overflow its banks. The reign of the Sahara
is uninterrupted, undisturbed. On all sides is the
desert, the brown shining desert, the implacable waste.
Above is a ball of fire ascending and descending in a
steel blue sky ; below a dry and scorching sea, which
the wind ripples into gloomy waves. The air is a
cloud which rains fire, for it is dim with perpetual
dust—each molecule a spark. The eye is pained and
dazzled ; it can find no rest. The ear is startled ; it
can find no sound. In the soft and yielding sand the
footstep perishes unheard ; nothing murmurs, nothing
rustles, nothing sings. ‘This silence is terrible, for it
conveys the idea of death, and all know that in the
desert death is not far off. When the elements be-
come active they assume peculiar and portentous forms,
If the wind blows hard a strange storm arises; the
atmosphere is pervaded by a dull and lurid glare ;
pillars of sand spring up as if by magic, and whirl
round and round in a ghastly and fantastic dance.
Then a mountain appearing on the horizon spreads
upward in the sky, and a darkness more dark than
night falls suddenly upon the earth. To those who
gasp with swelled tongues and blackened lips in the
last agonies of thirst, the mirage, like a mocking
22, THE BLACK COUNTRY.
dream, exhibits lakes of transparent water and shady
trees. But the wells of this desert are scanty, and
the waters found in them are salt.
The fugitives concealed the images of the gods, and
taking with them the sacred animals, embarked upon
their voyage of suffering and woe. After many weary
days they again sighted land: they arrived on the
shores of Ethiopia, the country of the blacks, Once
more their eyes were refreshed with green pastures ;
once more they listened to the rustling of the palms,
and drank the sweet waters of the Nile. Yet soon
they discovered that it was not their own dear river,
it was not their own beloved land. In Egypt nature
was a gentle handmaid; here she was a cruel and
capricious queen. The sky flashed and bellowed
against them ; the rain fell in torrents, and battered
down the houses of the Ethiopians, wretched huts
like hay-ricks, round in body with a cone-shaped roof,
built of grass and mud. The lowlands changed be-
neath the flood, not into meadows of flowers and fields
of waving corn, but into a pestilential morass. At the
rising of the dog-star came a terrible fly which drove
even the wild beasts from the river banks and de-
stroyed all flocks and herds. At that evil season the
Egyptian colonists were forced to migrate to the
forests of the interior, which were filled with savage
tribes. Here were the TYroglodytes who lived under
ground; an ointment was their only dress; their
language- resembled the hissing of serpents and the
whistling of bats. Every month they indulged in a
carouse ; every month they opened the veins of their
sheep and drank of the warm and gurgling blood as
if it had been delicious wine. They made merry
when they buried their dead, and, roaring with
THE NOBLE SAVAGE. 93
laughter, cast stones upon the corpse until it was
concealed from view. Here were the voot-eaters, the
twig-eaters, and the seed-eaters, who lived entirely on
such wretched kinds of food. Here were the elephant-
eaters, who, sitting on the tops of trees like birds,
watched the roads, and when they had sighted a herd,
crept after it, and hovered round it till the sleepy
hour of noon arrived. Then they selected a victim,
stole up to it:snake-like from behind, hamstrung the
enormous creature with a dexterous cut from a sharp
sword, and, as it lay helpless on the ground, feasted
upon morsels of its live and palpitating flesh. Here
were the locust-eaters, whose harvest was a passing
swarm ; for they lit a smoky fire underneath, which
made the insects fall like withered leaves: they
roasted them, pounded them, and made them into
cakes with salt. The fish-eaters dwelt by the coral-
line borders of the Red Sea; they lived in wigwams
thatched with sea-weed, with ribs of whales for the
rafters and the walls. The richest men were those
who possessed the largest bones. There was no fresh
water near the shore where they hunted for their food.
At stated times they went in herds like cattle to the
distant river-side, and singing to one another discord-
ant songs, lay flat on their bellies, and drank till they
were gorged.
Such was the land to which the Pharaohs were
exiled. In the meantime the Bedouins established
a dynasty which ruled a considerable time, and is
known in hieroglyphic history as that of the Hyskos
or Shepherd Kings.
But those barbarians were not domiciled in Egypt.
They could not breathe inside houses, and could not
understand how the walls remained upright. The camp
24 THE RESTORATION.
was their true fatherland. They lived aloof from the
Egyptians; they did not ally themselves with the
country gods; they did not teach the people whom they
had conquered to regard them as the successors of the
Pharaohs. Their art of government began and ended
with the collection of a tax, The Shepherd Kings were
associated in the minds of the Egyptian fellahs, not
with their ancient and revered religion, not with the
laws by which they were still governed under their
local chiefs, but only with the tribute of corn which
was extorted from them every harvest by the whip.
The idea of revolution was always present in their
minds. Misfortune bestowed upon them the ferocious
virtues of the desert, while the vice of cities crept into
the Bedouin camp. The invaders became corrupted
by luxurious indolence and sensual excess, till at
length a descendant of the Pharaohs raised an army
“in Ethiopia and invaded Egypt. The uprising was
general, and the Arabs were driven back into their
own harsh and meagre land.
The period which followed the Restoration is the
most brilliant in Egyptian history. The expulsion of
the Bedouins excited an enthusiasm which could not
be contained within the narrow valley of the Nile.
Egypt became not only an independent but a conquer-
_ing power. Her armies overran Asia to the shores of
the Euxine and of the Caspian Sea. Her fleets swept
over the Indian Ocean to the mud-stained shallows at
the Indus mouth. On the monuments we may read
the proud annals of those campaigns. We see the
Egyptian army, with its companies of archers shooting
from the ear like the Englishmen of old ; we see their
squadrons of light and heavy chariots of war, which
skilfully skirmished or heavily charged the dense
PHARAOH TRIUMPHANT. 25
masses of the foe; we see their remarkable engines
for besieging fortified towns ; their scaling ladders,
their moveable towers, and their shield-covered rams.
We see the Pharaoh returning in triumph, his car
drawn by captive kings, and a long procession of
prisoners bearing the productions of their respective
lands. The nature and variety of those trophies suffi-
ciently prove how wide and distant the Egyptian con-
quests must have been; for among the animals that
figure in the triumph are the brown bear, the baboon,
the Indian elephant, and the giraffe. Among the
prisoners are negroes of Soudan in aprons of bull’s
hides, or in wild beast skins with the tails hanging
down behind. They carry ebony, ivory, and gold;
their chiefs are adorned with leopard robes and ostrich
feathers, as they are at the present day. We see also
men from some cold country of the north with blue
eyes and yellow hair, wearing light dresses and long-
fingered gloves; while others clothed like Indians are
bearing beautiful vases, rich stuffs, and strings of pre-
cious stones.
When the kings came back from their campaigns,
they built temples of the yellow and rose-tinted sand-
stone, with obelisks of green granite, and long avenues
of sphinxes, to commemorate their victories and im-
mortalise their names. They employed prisoners of
war to erect these memorials of war; it became the
fashion to boast that a great structure had been raised
without a single Egyptian being doomed to work. By
means of these victories the servitude of the lower
classes was mitigated for a time, and the wealth of the
upper classes was enormously increased. The con-
quests, it is true, were not permanent; they were
merely raids on a large scale. But in very ancient
26 AN EGYPTIAN DRAWING-ROOM.
times, when seclusion and suspicion formed the foreign
policy of States, and when national intercourse was
scarcely known, invasion was often the pioneer of
trade. The wealth of Egypt was not derived from
military spoil, which soon dissolves, however large it
may appear, but from the new markets opened for
their linen goods.
It is certain that the riches contained in the
country were immense. The house of an Egyptian
gentleman was furnished in an elegant and costly style.
The cabinets, tables, and chairs were beautifully
carved, and were made entirely of foreign woods; of
ebony from Ethiopia, of a kind of mahogany from India,
of deal from Syria, or of cedar from the heights of
Lebanon. The walls and ceilings were painted in
gorgeous patterns similar to those which are now
woven into carpets. Every sitting room was adorned
with a vase of perfumes, a flower-stand and an altar
for unburnt offerings. The house was usually one
storey high: but the roof was itself an apartment
sometimes covered, but always open at the sides.
There the house-master would ascend in the evening
to breathe the cool wind, and to watch the city waking
into life when the heat was past. The streets
swarmed and hummed with men; the river was
covered with gilded gondolas gliding by. And when
the sudden night had fallen, lamps flashed and danced
below ; from the house-yards came sounds of laughter
and the tinkling of castanets; from the stream came
the wailing music of the boatmen and the soft splash-
ing of the lazy oar.
The Egyptain grandee had also his villa or country
house. Its large walled garden was watered by a
canal communicating with the Nile. One side of the
AN EGYPTIAN COUNTRY HOUSE. pel
canal was laid out in a walk shaded by trees; the
leafy sycamore, the acacia with its yellow blossoms,
and the dowm or Theban palm. In the centre of
the garden was a vineyard, the branches being trained
over trellis work so as to form a boudoir of green
leaves with clusters of red grapes glowing like pictures
on the walls. Beyond the vineyard, at the further
end of the garden, stood a summer house or kiosk; in
front of it a pond which was covered with the broad
leaves and blue flowers of the lotus and in which
water fowl played. It was also stocked with fish
which the owner amused himself by spearing; or
sometimes he angled for them as he sat on his
camp stool. Adjoining this garden were the stables
and coach houses, and a large park in which gazelles
were preserved for coursing. The Egyptian gentry
were ardent lovers of the chase. They killed wild ducks
with throw sticks, made use of decoys, and trained
cats to retrieve. They harpooned hippopotami in the
Nile ; they went out hunting in the desert with lions
trained like dogs. They were enthusiastic pigeon
fanciers, and had many different breeds of dogs. Their
social enjoyments were not unlike our own. Young
ladies in Egypt had no croquet ; but the gentle sport
of archery was known amongst them. They had also
boating parties on the Nile, and water pic-nics
beneath the shady foliage of the Egyptian bean. They
gave dinners, to which, as in all civilized countries, the
fair sex were invited. The guests arrived for the
most part in palanquins, but the young men of fashion
drove up to the door in their cabs, and usually arrived
rather late. Each guest was received by a cluster
of servants who took off his sandals, gave him
water to wash his hands, anointed and perfumed
28 AN EGYPTIAN DINNER PARTY.
him, presented him with a bouquet, and offered him
some raw cabbage to increase his appetite for wine, a
glass of which was taken before dinner—the sherry-
and bitters of antiquity.
The gentlemen wore wigs and false beards: their,
bands were loaded with rings. The ladies wore
their own hair plaited in a most elaborate manner, the
result of many hours between their little bronze
murors, and the skilful fingers of their slaves. Their
eyelashes were pencilled with the antimonial powder,
their finger nails tinged with the henna’s golden juice
—fashions older than the Pyramids, and which still
govern the women of the East.
The guests met in the dining room, and grace was
said before they sat down. They were crowned with
garlands of the lotus, the violet and the rose; the
florists of Egypt were afterwards famous in Rome.
WS,
oa
&
=.
i
THE GOSPEL OF THE SWORD. 267
he said, “‘I have not been sent to curse, but to be a
mercy to mankind.” He reproached himself in the
Koran for having behaved unkindly toa beggar, and so
immortalised his own offence. He issued a text,
“Use no violence in religion.”
But this text, with many others, he afterwards ex-
punged. When he arrived at Medina he found him-
self at the head of a small army, and he began to
publish his gospel of the sword. Henceforth we may
admire the statesman or the general; the prophet is
no more. It will hence be inferred that Mahomet was
hypocritical, or at least inconstant. But he was
constant throughout his life to the one object which
he had in view, the spread of his religion. At Mecca
it could best be spread by means of the gentle virtues ;
he therefore ordered his disciples to abstain from vio-
lence which would only do them harm, At Medina
he saw that the Caaba idolatry could not be destroyed
except by force: he therefore felt it his duty to make
use of force. He obeyed his conscience both at Mecca
and Medina; for the conscience is merely an organ of
the intellect, and is altered, improved, or vitiated,
according to the education which it receives and the
incidents which act upon it. And now Mahomet’s
glory expanded, and at the same time his virtue de-
clined. He broke the Truce of God: he was not
always true to his plighted word. As Moses forbade
the Israelites to marry with the Pagans, and then
took unto himself an Ethiopian wife, so Mahomet
broke his own marriage laws, commencing the career
of a voluptuary at fifty years of age. His Koran
sudras were now official manifestoes, legal regulations,
delivered in an extravagant and stilted style, differing
much from that of his fervid oracles at Mecca. But
268 ACHIEVEMENTS OF MAHOMET.
whatever may have been his private defects, when we
regard him as a ruler and lawgiver, we can only wonder
and admire. He established for the first time in his-
tory a United Arabia. In the moral life of his
countrymen he effected a remarkable reform. He
abolished drunkenness and gambling, vices to which
the Arabs had been specially addicted. He abolished
the practice of infanticide, and also succeeded in ren-
dering its memory detestable. It is said that Oumar,
the fierce apostle of Islam, shed but one tear in his
life, and that was when he remembered how, in the
Days of Darkness, his child had beat the dust off his
beard with her little hand as he was laying her in the °
grave. Polygamy and slavery he did not prohibit ;
but whatever laws he made respecting women and
slaves were made with the view of improving their
condition. He removed that facility of divorce by
means of which an Arab could at any time repudiate
his wife: he enacted that no Moslem should be made
a slave, that the children of a slave girl by her master
should be free. Instead of repining that Mahomet
did no more, we have reason to be astonished that he
did so much. His career is the best example that can
be given of the influence of the Individual in human
history. That single man created the glory of his
nation and spread his language over half the earth.
The words which he preached to jeering crowds twelve
hundred years ago are now being studied by scholars
or by devotees in London and Paris and Berlin; in
Mecca, where he laboured, in Medina, where he died ;
in Constantinople, in Cairo, in Fez, in Timbuctoo, in
Jerusalem, in Damascus, in Bassora, in Bagdhad, in
Bokhara, in Cabul, in Calcutta, in Pokin seeane
steppes of Central Asia, in the islands of the Indian
ie
EMPIRE OF THE CALIPHS. 269
Archipelago, in lands which are as yet unmarked
upon our maps, in the oases of thirsty deserts, in
obscure villages situated by unknown streams. It was
Mahomet who did all this; for he uttered the book
which carried the language; and he prepared the
army which carried the book. His disciples and suc-
cessors were not mad fanatics but resolute and sagacious
men, who made shrewd friendship with the malcontent
Christians among the Greeks and with the persecuted
Jews in Spain, and who in a few years created an
empire which extended from the Pyrenees to the
Hindoo Koosh.
This empire, it is true, was soon divided, and soon
became weak in all its parts. The Arabs could con-
quer, but they could not govern. Separate sovereign-
ties or caliphates were established in Babylonia, Egypt,
and Spain; while provinces, such as Morocco or
Bokhara, frequently obtained independence by rebellion.
Tt is needless to describe at length the history of the
caliphs and their successors ; it is only the twice-told
tale of the Euphrates and the Nile. The caliphs were
at first Commanders of the Faithful in reality; but
_ they were soon degraded, both in Cairo and Bagdhad,
to the position of the Roman Pope at the present
time. The government was seized by the Pretorian
Guards, who, in Bagdhad, were descended from
Turkish prisoners or negroes imported from Zanzibar ;
and in Egypt from Mamelukes or European slaves,
brought in their boyhood from the wild countries sur-
rounding the Black Sea, trained up from tender years
to the practice of arms, the sons of Christian parents,
but branded with a cross on the soles of their feet that
they might never cease to tread upon the emblem of
their native creed.
270 THE DARK CONTINENT.
However, by means of the Arab conquest the East
was united as it had never been before. The Euphrates
was no longer a line of partition between two worlds.
Arab traders established their factories on both sides
of the Indian Ocean and along the Asiatic shores of
the Pacific. Men from all countries met at Mecca
once a year. The religion of the Arabs conquered
nations whom the Arabs themselves had never seen.
When the Mahometan Turks of Central Asia took
Constantinople, and reduced the Caliphates to pro-
vinces, although the people of Mahomet were driven
back to their wilderness, the strength and glory of his
religion was increased. In the same manner the
conquest of Hindostan was an achievement of Islam,
in which the Arabs bore no part, and in Africa also
we shall find that the Koran reigns over extensive
regions which the Arabs visit only as travellers and
merchants.
Once upon a time Morocco and Spain were one
country, and Europe extended to the Atlas mountains,
which stood upon the shores of a great salt sea.
Beyond that ocean, to the south, lay the Dark Conti-
nent, surrounded on all sides by water, except on the
north-east, where it was joined to Asia near Aden by
an isthmus. A geological revolution converted the —
African ocean into a sandy plain, and the straits of
Bab-el-Mandeb and Gibraltar were torn open by the
retreating waves. But the Sahara, though no longer
under water, is still in reality a sea; the true Africa
commences on its southern coast, and is entirely dis-
tinct from the European-like countries between the
Mediterranean and the Atlas, and from the strip of S
Se ee ak eS
ry
fe
garden land which is cast down every year in the desert
by the Nile. The Black Africa or Soudan isa gigantic
i
ey
~
Dona
ine
‘a
J
THE GREAT PLATEAU. 271
table-land ; its sides are built of granite mountains
which surround it with a parapet or brim, and which
send down rivers on the outside towards the sea, on the
inside into the plateau. The outside rivers are brief
and swift: the inside rivers are long and sluggish
in their course, winding in all directions, collecting
into enormous lakes, and sometimes flowing forth
through gaps in the parapet to the Sahara or the
sea.
A table-land is seldom so uniform and smooth as
the word denotes. The African plateau is inter-
sected by mountain ranges and ravines, juts into
volcanic isolated cones, varies much in its climate, its
aspect, its productions, and in its altitude above the
sea. It may be divided into platforms or river basins
which are true geographical provinces, and each of
which should be labelled with the names of its ex-
plorers, There is the platform of Abyssinia,
which belongs to Bruce; the platform of the
White Nile, including the Lakes of Burton (Tan-
ganyika), of Speke (Victoria Nyanza), and of Baker
(Albert Nyanza); the platform of the Zambezi,
with its lakes Nyassa and Ngami, discovered by
Livingstone, the greatest of African explorers ; the
platform of the Congo, including the regions of
Western Equatorial Africa, hitherto unexplored ; the
platform of South Africa (below 20°S), which enjoys
an Australian climate, and also Australian wealth in
its treasure-filled mountains and its wool-abounding
plains; and lastly the platform of the Niger, which
deserves a place, as will be shown, in universal history.
The discoverers of the Niger in its upper parts are
Park, who first saw the Niger, Caillié, and myself:
in its central and eastern parts, Laing, who first reached
272 THE AFRICANS.
Timbuctoo, Caillié, who first returned from it, Denham,
Clapperton, Lander, and Barth.
The original inhabitants of Africa were the Hotten-
tots or Bushmen, a dwarfish race who have restless,
rambling, ape-like eyes, a click in their speech, and
bodies which are the wonder of anatomists. They are
now found only on the South African platform, or
perhaps here and there on the platform of the Congo.
They have been driven southward by the negroes, as the
Esquimaux in America were driven north by the Red
Indians, and the Finns in Europe by the Celtic tribes,
while the negroes themselves have yielded in some
parts of Africa to Asiatic tribes, as the Celts in Gaul
and Britain yielded to the Germans,
These negroes are sometimes of so deep a brown,
that the skin appears to be quite black; some-
times their skin is as ight as a mulatto’s: the aver-
age tint is a rich deep bronze. Their eyes are dark,
though blue eyes are occasionally seen; their hair is
black, though sometimes of a rusty red, and is always
of a woolly texture. To this rule there are no ex-
ceptions ; it is the one constant character, the one in-
fallible sign by which the race may be detected. —
Their lips are not invariably thick; their noses are
frequently well formed. In physical appearance they
differ widely from one another. The inhabitants of
the swamps, the dark forests, and the mountains, are
>,
“
ve
™
flat-nosed, long-armed, thin-calved, with mouths like x
muzzles, broad splay feet, and projecting heels, It ©
was for the most part from this class that the American —
slave markets were supplied ; the negroes of the States
and the West Indies represent the African in the same |
manner as the people of the Pontine marshes represent
the inhabitants of Italy. The negroes of South Africa
NEGRO PHYSIQUE. 273
stand at the opposite extreme. Enjoying an excellent
climate and a wholesome supply of food, they are
superior to most other people of their race. Yet it
is certain that they are negroes, for they have woolly
hair, and they do not differ in language or manners
from the inhabitants of the other platforms. When
the Portuguese first traded on the African coasts, they
gave the name Caffres (or Pagans) to the negroes of
Guinea as well as to those of the Cape and the
Mozambique. It is quite an accident that the name
has been retained for the latter tribes alone ; yet such
is the power of a name, that the Caffres and negroes
are universally supposed to be distinct. It is impos-
sible, however, to draw any line between the two.
Pure negroes are born on the coast of Guinea and in
the interior with complexions as light, with limbs as
symmetrical, and with features as near to the Euro-
pean standard as can be found in all Caffraria. Be-
tween the hideous beings of the Nile and Niger
deltas and the robust shepherds of the south, or the
aristocratic chieftains of the west, there is a wide
difference no doubt, but the intermediate gradations
exist. There is also much variety among the negroes
in respect to manners, mental condition, political
government, and mode of life. Some tribes live only
on the fruit of net and spear, eked out with insects,
and berries, and shells. Property-is ill defined among
them; if a man makes a canoe, the others use it when
they please; if he builds a better house than his
neighbours, they pull it down. Others, though still in
the hunting condition, have gardens of plantains and
cassada. In this condition the head man of the
village has little power, but property is secured by
law. Other tribes are pastoral, and resemble the
8
274 NEGRO STATES.
Arabs in their laws and customs; the patriarchal sys-
tem prevails among them. There are regions in which
the federal system prevails ; many villages are leagued
together ; and the head men, acting as deputies of their
respective boroughs, meet in congress to debate ques-
tions of foreign policy, and to enact laws. Large
empires exist in the Soudan. In some of these the
king is a despot, who possesses a powerful body-guard,
equivalent to a standing army, a court, with its regu-
lations of etiquette, and a well-ordered system of
patronage and surveillance. In others he is merely
an instrument in the hands of priests or military
nobles, and is kept concealed, giving audience from
behind a curtain to excite the veneration of the vulgar,
There are also thousands of large walled cities resem-
bling those of Europe in the middle ages, or of ancient
Greece, or of Italy before the supremacy of Rome,
encircled by pastures and by arable estates, and by
farming villages, to which the citizens repair at the
harvest time to superintend the labour of their slaves.
But such cities, with their villeggiatura, their municipal
government, their agora, or forum, their fortified
houses, their feuds and street frays of Capulet and
Montague, are not indigenous in Africa; their exist-
ence is comparatively modern, and is due to the influ-
ence of Religion.
An African village (old style) is usually a street of
huts, with walls like hurdles, and the thatch project-
ing so that its owner may sit beneath it im sun or
rain. The door is low; one has to crawl in order to
goin. There are no windows. The house is a single
room. In its midst burns a fire which is never suf-
fered to go out, for it is a light in darkness, a servant,
a companion, and a guardian angel; it purifies the
THE AFRICAN HUT. 275
miasmatic air. The roof and walls are smoke-dried,
but clean; in one corner is a pile of wood neatly cut
up into billets, and in another is a large earthen jar
filled with water, on which floats a gourd or calabash, a
vegetable bowl. Spears, bows, quivers, and nets hang
from pegs upon the walls. Let us suppose that it is
night ; four or five black forms are lying in a circle with
their feet towards the fire, and two dogs with pricked
up ears creep close to the ashes which are becoming
grey and cold,
The day dawns; a dim light appears through the
crevices and crannies of the walls. The sleepers rise
and roll up their mats, which are their beds, and place
on one side the round logs of wood which are their
pillows. The man takes down his bow and arrows
from the wall, fastens wooden rattles round his dogs’
necks, and goes out into the bush. The women replen-
ish the fire, and lift up an inverted basket whence sally
forth a hen and her chickens, which make at once for thé
open door to find their daily bread for themselves out-
side. The women take hoes, and go to the plantation,
or they take pitchers to fill at the brook. They wear
round the waist, before and behind, two little aprons -
made from a certain bark, soaked and beaten until it
is as flexible as leather. Every man has a plantation
of these cloth trees round bis hut. The unmarried
girls wear no clothes at all; but they are allowed to
decorate themselves with bracelets and anklets of iron,
flowers in their ears, necklaces of red berries like coral,
girdles of white shells, hair oiled and padded out with
the chignon, and sometimes white ashes along the
parting.
The ladies fill their pitchers, and take their morning
bath, discussing the merits or demerits of their husbands.
276 THE CALM.
The air is damp and cold, and the trees and grass are
heavy with dew; but presently the sun begins to
shine, the dewdrops fall, heavy and large as drops of
rain ; the birds chirp ; the flowers expand their drowsy
leaves, and receive the morning calls of butterflies
‘and bees. The forest begins to buzz and hum like a
great factory awaking to its work.
When the sun is high, boys come from the bush
with vegetable bottles frothing over with palm wine.
The cellar of the African, and his glass and china
shop, and his clothing warehouse, are in the trees. In
the midst of the village is a kind of shed, a roof sup-
ported on bare poles. It is the palaver house, in
which at this hour the old men sit, and debate the
affairs of state or decide law suits, each orator holding
a spear when he is speaking, and planting it in the
ground before him as he resumes his seat. Oratory is
the African’s one fine art: his delivery is fluent; his
harangues, though diffuse, are adorned with phrases
of wild poetry. That building is also the club house
of the elders, and there, when business is over, they
pass the heat of the day, seated on logs which are
smooth and shiny from use. At the hour of noon
their wives or children bring them palm wine, and
present it on their knees, clapping their hands in token
of respect. And then all is still: it is the hour of
silence and tranquillity ; the hour which the Portuguese
call the calm. The sun sits enthroned on the summit
of the sky; its white light is poured upon the earth ;
the straw thatch shines like snow. The forest is
silent; all nature sleeps.
Then down, down, down sinks the sun, and its rays
shoot slantwise through the trees, The hunters return,
and their friends run out and greet them as if they
THE DANCE. 277
had been gone for years, murmuring to them in a kind
of baby language, calling them by their names of love,
shaking their right hands, caressing their faces, patting
them upon their breasts, embracing them in all ways
except with the lips, for the kiss is unknown among the
Africans. And so they toy and babble and laugh with
one another till the sun turns red, and the air turns
dusky, and the giant trees cast deep shadows across
the street. Strange perfumes arise from the earth;
fireflies sparkle; grey parrots come forth from the
forest, and fly screaming round intending to roost in
the neighbourhood of man. The women bring their
husbands the gourd-dish of boiled plantains or bush-
yams, made hot with red pepper, seasoned with fish or
venison sauce. And when this simple meal is ended,
boom ! boom! goes the big drum; the sweet reed
flute pipes forth; the girls and lads begin to sing.
In a broad clean swept place they gather together,
jumping up and down with glee: the young men form
in one row, the women in another, and dance in two
long lines, retreating and advancing with graceful
undulations of their bodies, and arms waving in the
air. And now there is a squealing, wailing, unearthly
sound, and out of the wood, with a hop, skip, and jump,
comes Mumbo Jumbo, a hideous mask on his face and
a scourge in his hand. Woe to the wife who would
not cook her husband’s dinner, or who gave him
saucy words; for Mumbo Jumbo is the censor of female
morals, Well the guilty ones know him as they run
screaming to their huts. Then again the dance goes
on, and if there is a moon it does not cease throughout
the night.
Such is the picturesque part of savage life. But
it is not savage life; it merely lies upon the surface
278 AN AFRICAN CROCKFORD’S.
as paint lies upon the skin. Let us take a walk
through that same village on another day. Here, in
a hut, is a young man with one leg in the stocks, and
with his right hand bound to his neck by a cord.
The palm wine, and the midnight dance, and the
furtive caresses of Asua overpowered his discretion ;
he was detected, and now he is “ put in log.” If his
relations do not pay the fine, he will be sold as a
slave ; or if there is no demand for slaves in that
country, he will be killed. His friends reprove him
for trying to steal what the husband was willing to
sell; and might he not have guessed that Asua was
a decoy ?
Another day the palaver-house has the aspect of a
Crockford’s. An old man, who is one of the village
grandees, is spinning nuts for high stakes, and has
drunk too much to see that he is overmatched. He
loses his mats, his weapons, his goats, and his fowls,
his plantation, his house, his slaves whom he took
prisoners in his young and warlike days, his wives,
and his children, and his aged mother who fed him at
her breast,— all are lost, all are gone. And then,
with flushed eyes and trembling hand, he begins to
gamble for himself. He stakes his right leg, and
loses it. He may not move it until he has won it
back, or until it is redeemed. He loses both legs; he
stakes his body, and loses that also, and becomes a
bond-servant, or is sold as a slave.
Let us give another scene. A young man of
family has died; the whole village is convulsed with
grief and fear. It does not appear natural to them
that a man should die before he has grown old.
Some malignant power is at work among them. Is
it an evil spirit whom they have unwittingly offended,
THE ORDEAL. 279
and who is taking its revenge, or is it a witch ?
The great fetish-man has been sent for, and soon he
arrives, followed by his disciples. He wears a cap
waving with feathers, and a party-coloured garment
covered with charms; horns of gazelles, shells of
snails, and a piece of leopard’s liver wrapped up in
the leaves of a poison-giving tree. His face is stained
with the white juice from a dead man’s brain. He
rings an iron bell as he enters the town, and at the
same time the Drum begins to beat. The Drum has
its language, so that those who are distant from the
village understand what it is saying. With short,
lively sounds it summons to the dance ; it thunders
forth the alarm of fire or war, loudly and quickly
with no interval between the beats ; and now it tolls
the hour of judgment and the day of death. The
fetish-man examines the dead man, and says it is the
work of a witch. He casts lots with knotted cords ;
he mutters incantations ; he passes round the villagers,
and points out the guilty person, who is usually some
old woman whom popular opinion has previously sus-
pected and is ready to condemn. She is, however,
allowed the benefit of an ordeal: a gourd filled with
the red water is given her to drink. If she is inno-
cent, it acts as an emetic: if she is guilty, it makes
her fall senseless to the ground. She is then put to
death with a variety of tortures: burnt alive, or torn
limb from limb; tied on the beach at low water to
be drowned by the rising tide; rubbed with honey
and laid out in the sun; or buried in an ant-hill, the
most horrible death of all.
These examples are sufficient to show that the life
of the savage is not a happy one ; and the existence of
each clan or tribe is precarious in the extreme. They
280 THE MOSLEM NEGRO.
are like the wild animals, engaged from day to night
in seeking food, and ever watchful against the foes by
whom they are surrounded. The men who go out
hunting, the girls who go with their pitchers to the
village brook, are never sure that they will return ;
for there is always war with some neighbouring village,
and their method of making war is by ambuscade.
But besides these real and ordinary dangers, the savage
believes himself to be encompassed by evil spirits,
who may at any moment spring upon him in the guise
of a leopard, or cast down upon him the dead branch
of a tree. In order to propitiate these invisible
beings, his life is entangled with intricate rites ; it is
turned this way and that way as oracles are delivered,
or as omens appear. It is impossible to describe, or
even to imagine, the tremulous condition of the savage
mind ; yet the traveller can see from their aspect and
manners that they dwell in a state of never-ceasing
dread.
Let us now suppose that a hundred years have
passed, and let us visit that village again. The place
itself, and the whole country around has been trans-
formed. The forest has disappeared, and in its stead
are fields covered with the glossy blades of the young
rice ; with the tall red tufted maize with the millet
and the Guinea corn ; with the yellow flowers of the to-
bacco plant, growing in wide fields; and with large
shrubberies of cotton, the snowy wool peeping forth from
the expanding leaves. Before us stands a great town
surrounded by walls of red clay flanked by towers, and
with heavy wocden gates. Day dawns, and the women
come forth to the brook decorously dressed in blue
cotton robes passed over the hair as a hood. Men
ride forth on horseback, wearing white turbans and
THE SCHOOL. 281
swords suspended on their right shoulders by a crimson
sash. They are the unmixed descendants of the forest
savage; their faces are those of pure negroes, but
the expression is not the.same. Their manners are
grave and composed ; they salute one another, saying
in the Arabic, “ Peace be with you.” The palaver
house or town-hall is also the mosque; the parliamen-
tary debates and the law trials, which are there held,
have all the dignity of a religious service: they are
opened with prayer, and the name of the Creator is
often solemnly invoked by the orator or advocate, while
all the elders touch their foreheads with their hands,
and murmur in response, Amina! Amina! (Amen,
Amen). The town is pervaded by a bovine smell,
sweet to the nostrils of those who have travelled long
in the beefless lands of the people of the forest. Sounds
of industry may also be heard; not only the clinking
of the blacksmith’s hammer, but also the rattling of
the loom, the thumping of the cloth maker, and the
song of the cordwainer, as he sits cross-legged making
saddles or shoes. The women, with bow, and distaff, and
spindle, are turning the soft tree wool into thread ;
the work in the fields is done by slaves. The elders
smoke or take snuff in their verandahs, and sometimes
study a page of the Koran. When the evening draws
on there is no sound of flute and drum. A bonfire of
brushwood is lighted in the market place, and the boys
of the town collect around it with wooden boards in
their hands, and bawl their lessons, swaying their
bodies to and fro, by which movement they imagine
the memory is assisted. Then rises a long loud har-
monious cry, “Come to prayers, come to prayers,
_ Come to security. God is great. He liveth and he
dieth not. Come to prayers. O thou Bountiful!”
282 KORAN LAW.
La ilah illa Allah : Muhammed Rasul Allah.
Allahu Akbaru. Allahu Akbar.
Such towns as these may be less interesting to the
traveller than the pagan villages; he finds them merely
a secondhand copy of Eastern life. But though they are
not so picturesque, their inhabitants are happier and
better men. Violent and dishonest deeds are no longer
arranged by pecuniary compensation. Husbands can
no longer set wife-traps for their friends; adultery is
treated as a criminal offence, Men can no longer
squander away their relations at the gaming table, and
stake their own,bodies on a throw. Men can no longer
be tempted to vice and crime under the influence of
palm wine. Women can no longer be married by a
great chief im herds, and treated like beasts of burden
and like slaves. Each wife has an equal part of her
husband’s love by law ; it is not permitted to forsake
and degrade the old wife for the sake of the young.
Each wife has her own house, and the husband may
not enter until he has knocked at the door and re-
ceived the answer, Bismillah, nm the name of God.
Every boy is taught to read and write in Arabic, which
is the religious and official language in Soudan, as
Latin was in Europe, in the middle ages; they also write
their own language with the Arabic character, as we
write ours with the Roman letters. In such countries,
the policy of isolation is at an end; they are open to
all the Moslems in the world, and are thus connected
with the lands of the East. Here there is a remark-
able change, and one that deserves a place in history.
It is a movement the more interesting, since it is still
actively going on. The Mahometan religion has al-
ready overspread a region of Negroland as large as
Europe. It is firmly established not only in the
THE GREAT RIVER. 283
Africa of the Mediterranean and the Nile, and in the
oases of the Sahara, but also throughout that part of
the Continent which we have termed the platform of
the Niger.
In 1797 Mungo Park discovered the Niger in the
beart of Africa, at a point where it was as broad as
the Thames at Westminster; in 1817 Réné Caillié
crossed it at a point considerably higher up; in 1822
Major Laing attempted to reach it by striking inland
from Sierra Leone, but was forced by the natives to
return when he was only fifty miles distant from the
river; and in 1869 I made the same attempt, was
turned back at the same place, but made a fresh expe-
dition, and reached the river at a higher point than
Caillié and Park. But my success also was incom-
plete, for native wars made it impossible for me to
reach the source, though it was near at hand; and
that still remains, a splendid prize for one who will
walk in my footsteps, as I walked in those of Laing.
The source of the Niger, as given in the maps, was
fixed by Laing from native information, which I ascer-
tained to be correct. There is no doubt that this river
rises in the backwoods of Sierra Leone, at a distance
of only two hundred miles from the coast. It runs
for some time as a foaming hill-torrent, bearing obscure
and barbarous names, and, at the point where I found
it, glides into the broad calm breast of the plateau,
-and receives its illustrious name of the Joliba, or Great
River.
It flows north-east, and enters the Sahara, as if
intending, like the Nile, to pour its waters into the
Mediterranean Sea. But suddenly it turns towards
the east, so that Herodotus, who heard of it when he
was at Memphis, supposed that it joined the Nile ; and
284 THE NIGER PLATFORM.
such was the prevailing opinion not only among the
Greeks, but also among the Arabs in the middle ages.
They did not know that the eccentric river again
wheels round, flows towards the sea near which it
rose, passes through the latitude of its birth, and,
having thus described three-quarters of a circle, de-
bouches by many mouths into the Bight of Benin,
So singular a course might well baffle the speculations
of geographers and the investigations of explorers.
The people who dwell on the banks of the river do
not know where it ends. I was told by some that it
went to Mecca, but by others that it went to Jeru-
salem. Mungo Park’s own theory was ludicrously
incorrect; he believed that the Congo was its
mouth ; others declared that it never reached the sea
at all. It was Lander who discovered the mouth of
the Niger, at one time as mysterious as the sources of
the Nile, and so established the hypothesis which
Reichard had advanced, and which Mannert had de-
clared to be ‘“ contrary to nature.”
The Niger platform or basin is flat, with here and
there a line of rolling hills containing gold. The
vegetation consists of high coarse grass and trees of
small stature, except on the banks of streams, where
they grow to a larger size. The palm-oil tree is not
found on this plateau, but the shea-butter or tallow
tree abounds in natural plantations, which will some
day prove a source of enormous wealth. As the river
flows on, these trees disappear, the plains widen and
are smoothed out; the country assumes the character
of the Sahara.
The negroes who inhabited the platform of the Niger
lived chiefly on the banks of the river, subsisting on
lotus-root and fish. Like all savages, they were jealous
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SALT. 285
and distrustful; their intercourse was that of war.
But nature, by means of a curious contrivance, has
rendered it impossible for men to remain eternally
apart. Common salt is one of the mineral constituents
of the human body, and savages, who live chiefly on
vegetable food, are dependent upon it for their life.
In Africa, children may be seen sucking it like sugar.
“Come and eat with us to-day,” says the hospitable
African ; “ we are going to have salt for dinner.” It
is not in all countries that this mineral food is to be
found ; but the saltless Jands in the Soudan contain
gold dust, ivory, and slaves ; and so a system of barter
is arranged, and isolated tribes are brought into
contact with one another.
The two great magazines are the desert and the
ocean, At the present day, the white powdery Eng-
lish salt is carried on donkeys and slaves to the upper
waters of the Niger, and is driving back the crystal-
line salt of the Sahara. In the ancient days, the salt
of the plateau came entirely from the mines of Bilma
and Toudeyni, in the desert, which were occupied and
worked by negro tribes, But at a period far remote,
before the foundations of Carthage were laid, a Berber
nation, now called the Tuaricks, overspread the desert,
and conquered the oases and the mines. This terrible
people are yet the scourge of the peaceful farmer and
the passing caravan. They camp in leather tents;
they are armed with lance and sword, and with
shields, on which is painted the image of a cross. The
Arabs call them “the muffled ones,” for their mouths
and noses are covered with a bandage, sometimes
black, sometimes white, above which sit in deep
sockets, like ant-lions in their pits, a pair of dark,
cruel, sinister looking eyes. They levy tolls on all
286 THE BAGDHAD OF THE WEST.
travellers, and murder those who have the reputation
of unusual wealth, as they did Miss Tinné, whose iron
water tanks they imagined to be filled with gold.
When they poured down on the Sahara, they were
soon attracted by the rich pastures and alluvial plains
of the black country. In course of time their raids
were converted into conquests, and they established a
line of kingdoms from the Niger to the Nile, in the
border land between the Sahara and the parallel 10° N.
Timbuctoo, Haoussa, Bornou, Baghirmi, Waday, Dar-
fur, and Kordofan, were the names of these kingdoms ;
in all of them Islam is now the religion of the state;
all of them belong to the Asiatic world.
The Tuaricks of the Soudan were merely the ruling
caste, and were much darkened by harem blood: but
they communicated freely with their brethren of the
desert, who had dealings with the Berbers beyond the
Atlas. When the Andalusia of the Arabs became a
polite and civilised land crowds of ingenious artisans,
descended from the old Roman craftsmen, or from
Greek emigrants, or from their Arab apprentices, took
architecture over to North Africa. The city of
Morocco was filled with magnificent palaces and
mosques ; it became the metropolis of an indepen-
dent kingdom; it was called the Bagdhad of the
west; its doctors were as learned as the doctors of
Cordova, its musicians as skilful as the musicians of
Seville. A wealthy and powerful Morocco could not
exist without its influence being felt across the desert :
the position of Timbuctoo in reference to Morocco was
precisely that of Meroe to Memphis or to Thebes.
The Sahara, it is true, is much wider across from
Morocco to Timbuctoo than from Egypt to Ethiopia,
but the introduction of camels brought the Atlas and
ARAB EXPLORERS. 287
the Niger near to one another, The Tuaricks, who
had previously lived on horses, under whose bellies
they tied water bottles of leather when they went on
a long journey, had been able to cross the desert only
at certain seasons of the year; but now with the aid
of the camel, which they at once adopted and from
which they bred the famous Mehara strain, they could
cross the Sahara at its widest part in a few days. A
regular trade was established between the two countries
and was conducted by the Berbers. Arab merchants,
desirous of seeing with their own eyes the wondrous land
of ivory and gold, took passage in the caravans, crossed
the yellow seas, sprang from their camels upon the green
shores of the Soudan, and kneeling on the banks of the
Niger, with their faces turned towards Mecca, dipped
their hands in its waters and praised the name of
the Lord. They journeyed from city to city, and
from court to court, and composed works of travel
which were read with eager delight all over the
Moslem world, from Spain to Hindostan. The Arabs
thronged to this newly discovered world. They built
factories: they established schools; they converted
dynasties. They covered the river with masted
vessels ; they built majestic temples with graceful
minaret and swelling dome. Theological colleges and
public libraries were founded ; camels came across the
desert laden with books; the negroes swarmed to the
lectures of the mollahs; Plato and Aristotle were
studied by the banks of the Niger, and the glories of
Granada were reflected at Timbuctoo. That city
became the refuge of political fugitives and criminals
from Morocco. In the sixteenth century the Emperor
despatched across the desert a company of harquebusiers,
who, with their strange, terrible weapons, every-
288 THE FAIR.
where triumphed like the soldiers of Cortes and
Pizarro in Mexico and Peru, These musketeers
made enormous conquests, not for their master, but
for themselves. They established an oligarchy of
their own ; it was afterwards dethroned by the natives,
but there yet exist men who, as Barth informs us, are
called the descendants of the musketeers and who
wear a distinctive dress. But that imperial expedi-
tion was the last exploit of the Moors. After the
conquest of Granada by the Christians and of Algeria
by the Turks, Morocco, encompassed by enemies, be-
came a savage and isolated land ; 'Timbuctoo, its com-
mercial dependent, fell into decay, and is now chiefly
celebrated as a cathedral town.
The Arabs carried cotton and the art of its manu-
facture into the Soudan, which is one of the
largest cotton growing areas in the world. Its Man-
chester is Kano, which manufactures blue cloth and
coloured plaids, clothes a vast negro population, and
even exports its goods to the lands of the Mediter-
ranean Sea. Denham and Clapperton, who first
reached the lands of Haoussa and Bornou, were aston-
ished to find among the negroes magnificent courts ;
regiments of cavalry, the horses caparisoned in silk for
gala days and clad in coats of mail for war; long
trains of camel laden with salt, and natron, and corn,
and cloth, and cowrie shells, which form the currency,
and kola nuts, which the Arabs call “the coffee of the
negroes.” They attended with wonder gigantic fairs at
which the cotton goods of Manchester, the red cloth of
Saxony, double-barrelled guns, razors, tea and sugar,
Nuremberg ware and writing-paper were exhibited for
sale. They also found merchants who offered to cash
their bilis upon houses at Tripoli; and scholars ac-'
MOSLEM MISSIONARIES. 289
quainted with Avicenna, Averroes, and the Greek
philosophers.
The Mahometan rohsion was spread in Central
Africa to a great extent i= the travelling Arab mer-
chants, who were welcomed everywhere at the negro
or semi-negro courts, and who frequently converted
the pagan kings by working miracles, that is to say,
by means of events which accidentally followed their
solemn prayers; such as the healing of a disease, rain
in the midst of drought, or a victory in war.’ But
the chief instrument of conversion was the school. It
is much to the credit of the negroes that they keenly
appreciate the advantages of education: they appear
to possess an instinctive veneration and affection for the
book. Wherever Mahometans settled, the sons of chiefs
were placed under their tuition; a Mahometan quar-
ter was established ; it was governed by its own laws;
its sheik rivalled in power and finally surpassed the
native kings. The machinery of the old pagan court
might still go on; the negro chief might receive the
magnificent title of sultan; he might be surrounded
by albinoes and dwarfs, and big-headed men and buf-
foons ; he might sit in a cage, or behind a curtain in
a palace with seven gates, and receive the ceremonial
visits of his nobles, who stripped off a garment at
each gate, and came into his presence naked, and
cowered on the ground, and clapped their hands, and
sprinkled their heads with dust, and then turned
round and sat with their backs presented in reverence
towards him, as if they were unable to bear the sight
of his countenance shining like a well-blacked boot.
But the Arab or Moorish sheik would be in reality
the king, deciding all questions of foreign policy, of
peace and war, of laws and taxes, and commercial re-
T
290 ARABS ON THE EAST COAST.
gulations, holding a position resembling that of the
Gothic generals who placed Libius Severus and Augus-
tulus upon the throne; of the mayors of the palace
beside the Merovingian princes ; of the Company’s ser-
vants at the court of the Great Mogul. And when
the Mahometans had become numerous, and a fitting
season had arrived, the sheik would point out a well-
known Koran text, and would proclaim war against
the surrounding pagan kings, and so the movement
which had been commenced by the school would be
continued by the sword.
It may, however, be doubted whether the Arab
merchants alone would have spread Islam over the
Niger plateau. On the east coast of Africa they have
possessed settlements from time immemorial. Before
the Greeks of Alexandria sailed into the Indian Ocean;
before the Tyrian vessels, with Jewish supercargoes,
passed through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Arabs
of Yemen had established factories in the Mozambique,
and on the opposite coast of Malabar, and carried on a
trade between the two lands, selling to the Indians ivory,
ebony, slaves, bees-wax, and gold-dust, brought down
in quills from the interior by the negroes, to whom
they sold in return the sugar, beads, and blue cotton
goods of Hindostan. In the period of the caliphs
these settlements were strengthened and increased, in
consequence of civil war, by eure tribes from Oman,
and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The emi-
grants made Africa their home ; they built large towns,
which they surrounded with orchards of the orange
tree, and plantations of the date; they introduced the
culture of tobacco, sugar-cane, and cotton. They were
loved and revered by the negroes: they made long’
journeys into the interior for the purposes of trade.
4
bm
THE FOULAS. 291
Yet their religion has made no progress; and they do
not attempt to convert the blacks. Their towns
resemble those of the Europeans; they dwell apart
from the natives, and above them.
The Mahometans who entered the Niger regions,
were not only the Arab merchants, but also the Berbers
of the desert, who, driven by war, or instigated by ambi-
tion, poured into the Soudan by tribes, seized lands
and women, and formed mulatto nationalities. Of
these the Foulas are the most famous. They were
originally natives of Northern Africa; having inter-
married during many generations with the natives, they
have often the appearance of pure negroes ; but they
always call themselves white men, however black their
skins may seem to be. In the last century they were
dispersed in small and puny tribes. Some wandered
as gipsies, selling wooden bowls; others were roaming
shepherd clans, paying tribute to the native kings,
and suffering much ill-treatment. In other parts they
lived a bandit life. Sometimes, but rarely, they re-
sided in towns which they had conquered, pursued
commerce, and tilled the soil. Yet in war they were
far superior to the negroes: if only they could be
united, the most powerful kingdoms would be unable
to withstand them. And, finally, their day arrived.
A man of their own race returned from Mecca, a pil-
grim and a prophet, gathered them like wolves
beneath his standard, and poured them forth on the
Soudan. »
The pilgrimage to Mecca is incumbent only on
those who can afford it; but hundreds of devout ne-
groes every year put on their shrouds and beg their
way across the Continent to Massowah. There tak-
ing out a few grains of gold dust cunningly concealed
292 THE NEGROES IN MECCA.
between the leaves of their Korans, they pay their
passage across the Red Sea, and tramp it from Jedda
to Mecca, feeding as they go on the bodies of the
camels that have been left to die, and whose meat is
lawful if the throat is cut before the animal expires.
As soon as the negroes or Takrouri as they are called,
arrive in the Holy City, they at once set to work, some
as porters, and some as carriers of water in leather skins ;
others manufacture baskets and mats of date leaves ;
others establish a market for firewood, which they col-
lect in the neighbouring hills. They inhabit miser-
able huts, or ruined houses in the quarter of the lower
classes, where the sellers of charcoal dwell, and where
locusts are sold by the measure. Some of these poor
and industrious creatures spread their mats in the
cloisters of the Great Mosque, and stay all the time
beneath that sacred and hospitable roof. They are
subject to exclamatory fits and pious convulsions so
common among the negroes of the Southern States.
Often they may be seen prostrate on the pavement,
beating their foreheads against the stones, weeping
bitterly, and pouring forth the wildest ejaculations,
The Great Mosque at Mecca is a spacious square,
surrounded by a colonnade. In the midst of the
quadrangle is the small building which is called the
Caaba. It has no windows; its door, which is seldom
opened, is coated with silver; its padlock, once of pure
gold, is now of silver gilt. On its threshold are placed
every night various small wax candles and perfuming
pans filled with aloeswood and musk. The walls of
the building are covered with a veil of black silk,
tucked up on one side, so as to leave exposed the
famous Black Stone which is niched in the wall out-
side. The veil is not fastened close to the building,
THE GREAT MOSQUE. 293
so that the least breath of air, causes it to wave in
slow undulating movements, hailed with prayer by the
kneeling crowd around. They believe that it is caused
by the wings of guardian angels who will transport the
Caaba to Paradise when the last trumpet sounds.
At a little distance from this building, is the Zem-
-zem well, and while some of the pilgrims are standing
by its mouth waiting to be served, or walking round
the Caaba, or stooping to kiss the stone, other scenes
may be observed in the cloisters and the square ; and
as in the Temple at Jerusalem, these are not all of the
most edifying nature. Children are playing at games,
or feeding the wild pigeons whom long immunity has
rendered tame. Numerous schools are going on, the
boys chanting in a loud voice, and the master’s baton
sometimes falling on their backs. In another corner,
a religious lecture is being delivered. Men of all
‘nations are clustered in separate groups ; the Persian
heretics with their caps mounting to heaven, and their
beards descending to the earth ; the Tartar, with ob-
lique eyes and rounded limbs, and light silk handker-
chief tied round his brow; Turks with shaven faces,
and in red caps: the lean Indian pauper, begging with
a miserable whine; and one or two wealthy Hindoo
merchants not guiltless of dinners given to infidels, and
_ of iced champagne. At the same time, an active
_ business is being done‘in sacred keepsakes ; rosaries
made of camel bone, bottles of Zemzem water, dust col-
lected from behind the veil, toothsticks made of a
fibrous root, such as that which Mahomet himself was
wont to use, and coarsely executed pictures of the
Caaba. Mecca itself, like most cities frequented by
strangers, whether pilgrims or mariners, is not an abode
of righteousness and virtue. As the Tartars say of it,
294 ABD-UL-WAHHAB.
“The torch is dark at its foot,” and many a pilgrim
might exclaim with the Arabian Ovid
*¢T set out in the hopes of lightening my sins
And returned, bringing home with mea fresh load of fiunbpeaionde
But the very wickedness of a Holy City deepens real
enthusiasm into severity and wrath. When Abd-ul-
Wahhab saw taverns opened in Mecca itself, and the
inhabitants alluring the pilgrims to every kind of vice :
when he found that the sacred places were made a
show; that the mosque was inhabited by guides and
officials who were as greedy as beasts of prey: that
wealth, not piety, was the chief object of consideration
in a pilgrim, he felt as Luther felt at Rome. The
disgust which was excited in his mind by the manners
of the day was extended also to the doctrines that
were in vogue. ‘The -prayers that were offered up to
Mahomet and the saints resembled the prayers that
were once offered up to the Daughters of Heaven, the
Intercessors of the ancient Arabs. The pilgrimages
that were made to the tombs of holy men were the
old journeys to the ancestral graves. The worship of
One God, which Mahomet had been sent to restore,
had again become obscured ; the Days of Darkness had
returned. He preached a Unitarian revival: he held
up as his standard and his guide the Koran, and
nothing but the Koran; he founded a puritan sect
which is now a hundred years of age, and still remains
an element of power and disturbance in the East.
Danfodio, the Black Prophet, also went out of Mecca,
his soul burning with zeal. He determined to reform
the Soudan. He forbade, like Abd-ul-Wahhab, the
smoking of tobacco, the wearing of ornaments, and |
co) )
finery. But he had to contend with more gross abuses
still, In many negro lands which professed Islam,
Geis
THE BLACK PROPHET. 295
palm wine and millet beer were largely consumed :
the women did not veil their faces nor even their
bosoms ; immodest dances were performed to the pro-
fane music of the drum: learned men gained a liveli-
hood by writing charms: the code of the Koran was
often supplanted by the old customary laws. Danfodio
sent letters to the great kings of Timbuctoo, Haoussa,
and Bornou, commanding them to reform their own
lives and those of their subjects, or he would chastise
them in the name of God. They received these in-
structions from an unknown man, as the King of Kings
received the letter of Mahomet, and their fate re-
sembled his. Danfodio united the Foula tribes into
an army, which he inspired with his own spirit.
Thirsting for plunder and paradise, the Foulas swept
over the Soudan; they marched into battle with
shouts of frenzied joy, smging hymns and waving their
green flags, on which texts of the Koran were em-
broidered in letters of gold. The empire which they
established at the beginning of this century is now
crumbling away: but the fire is still burning on the
frontiers. Wherever the Foulas are settled in the
neighbourhood of pagan tribes they are extending
their power ; and although the immediate effects are
- disastrous, villages being laid in ashes, men slaughtered
by thousands, women and children sold as slaves, yet
in the end these crusades are productive of good: the
villages are converted into towns; a new land is
brought within the sphere of commercial and religious
intercourse, and is added to the Asiatic world.
The phenomenon of a religious Tamerlane has been
repeated more than once in Central Africa. The last
example was that of Oumar the Pilgrim, whose capital
was Segou, and whose conquests extended from Timbuc-
tooto the Senegal, where hecameintocontact with French
296 THE TURKS IN AFRICA.
artillery, and for ever lost his prestige as a prophet.
But we are taught by the science of history that these
military empires can never long endure. Itis probable
that the Mahometan Soudan will in time become a
province of the Turks. Central Africa, as we have
shown, received its civilization not from Egypt, but
from the grand Morocco of the middle ages. Egypt
has always lived with its back to Africa, its eyes, and
often its hands, on Syria and Arabia. Abyssinia was not
subdued by the caliphs, because it was not coveted by
them; and there was little communication between
Egypt and Soudan. Mehemet-Ali was the first to
re-establish the kingdom of the Pharaohs in Ethiopia,
and to organise negro regiments. Since his time the
Turkish power has been gradually spreading towards the
interior, and the expedition of Baker Pacha, whatever
may be its immediate result, is the harbinger of great
events to come. Should the Turks be driven out of
Europe, they would probably become the Emperors of
Africa, which in the interests of civilisation would be a
fortunate occurrence. The Turkish government is un-
doubtedly defective in comparison with the govern-
ments of Europe; but it is perfection itself in com-
parison with the governments of Africa. If the Egyp-
tians had been allowed to conquer Abyssinia, there
would have been no need of an Abyssinian expedition ;
and nothing but Egyptian occupation will put an end
to the wars which are always being waged and always
have been waged in that country between bandit chiefs.
Those who are anxious that Abyssinian Christianity
should be preserved need surely not be alarmed: for
the Pope of Abyssinia is the Patriarch of Cairo, a
Turkish subject; and the Aboona or archbishop has
always been an Egyptian, But the Turks no longer
have it in their power to commit actions which Euro-
PROSPECTUS. 297
peans would condemn. They now belong to the civi-
lised system: they are subject to the Law of Opinion.
Already they have been compelled by that mysterious
power to suppress the slave-making wars which were
formerly waged every year from Kordofan and Sen-
naar, and which are still being waged from the inde-
pendent kingdoms of Darfur, Waday, Baghirmi, and
Bornou. Wherever the Turks reign, a European is
allowed to travel; wherever a European travels, a
word is spoken on behalf of the oppressed. That
word enters the newspapers ; passes into a diplomatic
remonstrance; becomes a firman ; and a governor or com-
mandant in some sequestered province of an Oriental
Empire suffers the penalty of his misdeeds. It
should be the policy of European powers to aid the
destruction of all savage kingdoms, or at least never
to interfere on their behalf.
It has now been shown that a vast region within
the Dark Continent, the world beyond the sandy ocean,
is governed by Asiatic laws, and has attained an Asia-
tic civilization. We must next pass to the Atlantic
side, and study the effects which have been produced
among the negroes by the intercourse of Europeans.
Tt will be found that the transactions on the coast of
Guinea belong not only to the biography of Africa,
but also to universal history, and that the domestica-
tion of the negro has indirectly assisted the material
progress of Europe, and the development of its morality.
The programme of the next chapter will be as follows :
The rise of Europe out of darkness; the discovery of
Western Africa by the Portugese ; the institution of
the slave trade; and the history of that great repub-
lican and philanthropic movement which won its
first victory in the abolition of the slave trade, 1807 ;
its last in the taking of Richmond, 1865.
CHAPTER III.
LIBERTY.
THE history of Europe in ancient times is the history
of those lands which adjoin the Mediterranean Sea.
Beyond the Alps lay a vast expanse of marsh and
forest, through which flowed the swift and gloomy
Rhine. On the right side of that river dwelt the
Germans ; on its left, the Celtic Gauls. Both people,
in manners and customs, resembled the Red Indians.
They lived in round wigwams, with a hole at the top
to let out the smoke. They hunted the white-maned
bison and’ the brown bear, and trapped the beaver,
which then built its lodges by the side of every stream.
They passed their spare time in gambling, drunken-
ness, and torpor; while their squaws cut the firewood,
cultivated their garden-plots of grain, tended the
shagey-headed cattle, and the hogs feeding on acorns
and beech-mast, obedient to the horn of the mistress,
but savage to strangers as a pack of wolves. At an
early period, however, the Gauls came into contact
with the Phcenicians and the Greeks ; they served in
the Carthaginian armies, and acquired a taste ‘for
trade ; they learnt the cultivation of the vine, and
some of the metallic arts; their priests, or learned
men employed the Greek characters in writing. But
the Gauls had a mania for martial glory, and often
attacked the peaceful Greek merchants of Mar-
seilles. The Greeks at last called in the assistance
ROMAN GAUL. 299
of the Romans, who not only made war on the hostile
tribes, but on the peaceful tribes as well. Thus com-
menced the conquest of Gaul. It was completed by
Caesar, who used that country as an exercise ground
for his soldiers, and prepared them, by a hundred
battles, for the mighty combat in which Pompey was
overthrown.
Military roads were made across the Alps: Roman
colonies were despatched into the newly conquered
land: Italian farmers took up their abode in the
native towns, and the chiefs were required to send
their sons to school. Thus the Romans obtained
hostages, and the Celts were pleased to see their boys
neatly dressed in white garments edged with purple,
displaying their proficiency on the waxen tablets and
the counting board. In a few generations the Celts
had disappeared. On the banks of the Rhone and
the Seine magnificent cities arose, watered by aqueducts,
surrounded by gardens, adorned with libraries, temples,
and public schools. The inhabitants called themselves
Romans, and spoke with patriotic fervour of the glorious
days of the Republic.
Meanwhile the barbarians beyond the Rhine re-
mained in the savage state. They often crossed the
river to invade the land which had ripened into wealth
before their eyes: but the frontier was guarded by a
chain of camps; and the Germans, arméd only with
clumsy spears, and wooden shields, could not break
the line of Roman soldiers, who were dressed in steel,
who were splendidly disciplined, and who had military
engines. The Gauls had once been a warlike people ;
they now abandoned the use of arms. The Empire
insured them against invasion in return for the taxes
which they paid.
300 THE ANCIENT GERMANS.
But there came a time when the tribute of the
provinces no longer returned to the provinces to be
expended on the public buildings and the frontier
garrisons and the military roads. The rivers of gold
which had so long flowed into Rome at last dried up:
the empire became poor, and yet its expenses remained
the same. The Pretorian Guards had still to be paid;
the mob of the capital had still to be rationed with
bread, and bacon, and wine, and oil, and costly shows.
Accordingly the provinces were made to suffer. Ex-
orbitant taxes were imposed: the aldermen and civil
councillors of towns were compelled to pay enormous
fees in virtue of their office, and were forbidden to
evade such expensive honours by enlisting in the army,
or by taking holy orders. The rich were accused of
crimes that their property might be seized: the crops
in the fields were gathered by the police.
E
PERIOD OF INTELLECT. 467
not sent upon the earth to prepare himself for existence
in another world; he was sent upon earth that he
might beautify it as a dwelling, and subdue it to his
use ; that he might exalt his intellectual and moral
powers until he had attained perfection, and had raised
himself to that ideal which he now expresses by the
name of God, but which, however sublime it may ap-
pear to our weak and imperfect minds, is far below
the splendour and majesty of that Power by whom the
universe was made.
We shall now leave the darkness of the primeval
times, and enter the theatre of history. The Old
World is a huge body, with its head buried in eternal
snows; with the Atlantic on its left, the Pacific on
its right, the Indian Ocean between its legs. The left
limb is sound and whole; its foot is the Cape of Good
Hope. The right limb has been broken and scattered
by the sea; Australia and the Archipelago are de-
tached; Asia has been amputated at the thigh. The
lower extremities of this Old World are covered for the
most part with thorny thickets and with fiery plains.
The original natives were miserable creatures, living
chiefly on insects and shells, berries and roots ; cast-
ing the boomerang and the bone-pointed dart ; abject,
naked, brutish} and forlorn. We pass up the body in
its ancient state; through the marsh of central
Africa, with its woolly-haired blacks upon the left,
and through the jungles of India, with its straight-
haired blacks upon the right; through the sandy
wastes of the Sahara, and the broad Asiatic table-
lands; through the forest of Central Europe, the
Russian steppes, and the Siberian plains, until we
arrive at the frozen shores of the open Polar Sea.
The land is covered with fields of snow, on which
468 ABORIGINES OF EUROPE.
white bears may be seen in flocks like sheep. Ice
mountains tower in the air, and, as the summer ap-
proaches, glide into the ocean and sail towards the
south. The sky is brightened by a rosy flame, which
utters a crisp and crackling sound. All else is silent ;
nature is benumbed. ‘The signs of human habitations
are rare; sometimes a tribe of Esquimaux may be
perceived, dwelling in snow huts, enveloped in furs,
driving sledges with teams of dogs, tending their herds
of reindeer on the moss-grounds, or dashing over the
cold waters in their canoes to hunt the walrus and
the seal.
This gloomy region, where the year is divided into
one day and one night, lies entirely outside the stream
of history. We descend through the land of the pme
to the land of the oak and beech. Huge woods ‘and
dismal fens covered Europe in the olden time; by the
banks of dark and sullen rivers the beavers built their
villages ; the bears and the wolves were the aristocracy
of Europe ; men paid them tribute in flesh and blood.
A people, apparently of Tartar origin, had already
streamed into this continent from Asia; but the true
aborigines were not extinct; they inhabited huts
built on piles in the lakes of Switzerland ; they herded
together in mountain caves. They were armed
only with stone weapons ; but they cultivated certain
kinds of grain, and had tamed the reindeer, the ox,
the boar, and the dog. In ancient history Europe
has no place. Even the lands to the south of the
Alps were inhabited by savages at a time when Asia
was in a civilised condition. ;
It is therefore Asia that we must first survey ; it is
there that the history of books and monuments begins.
The Tigris and Euphrates rise in a table-land adjoining _
a.
THE SHEMITIC RACE. 469
the Black Sea, and flow into the Persian Gulf. On
the right is a desert extending to the Nile; on the
left, a chain of hills. A shepherd people descended
from the plateau, occupied the land between the rivers,
the plains between the Tigris and the hills, and the
alluvial regions at the lower course of the Euphrates.
They wandered over the Arabian desert with their
flocks and herds, settled in Canaan and Yemen, crossed
over into Africa, extended along its northern shores as
far as the Atlantic, overspread the Sahara, and made
‘ border wars upon Soudan. In the course of many
centuries the various branches of this people diverged
from one another. In Barbary and Sahara they were
called Berbers; in the valley of the Nile, Egyptians ;
Arabs, in the desert and in Yemen; Canaanites, in
Palestine ; Assyrians, in Mesopotamia and the upper
regions of the Tigris; Chaldzeans or Babylonians, in the
lower course of the Euphrates. The Canaanites, the
Arabs of Yemen, and the Berbers of Algeria adopted
agricultural habits and lived in towns; the Berbers
of Sahara, the Bedouins of the Syro-Arabian desert,
and of the waste regions in Assyria remained a
pastoral and wandering people. But im Chaldea
and in Egypt, the colonists were placed under
peculiar conditions. Famines impelled the shep-
herds to make war on other tribes; famines impelled
the Chaldeans and Egyptians to contend with the
Euphrates and the Nile, to domesticate the waters,
to store them in reservoirs, and to distribute them,
as required, upon the fields. It is not improbable
that the Egyptians were men of Babylonia driven by
war or by exile into the African deserts; that they
were composed of two noble classes, the priests and the
military men ; that they took with them some know-
470 THE EGYPTIANS.
ledge of the arts and sciences, which they, afterwards
developed into the peculiar Egyptian type; that they
found the valley inhabited by a negro race, fishing in
papyrus canoes, living chiefly on the lotus root, and
perhaps growing doura corn; that they reduced those
negroes to slavery, divided them into castes, allowed
them to retain in each district the form of animal
worship peculiar to the respective tribes, making such
worship emblematical, and blending it with their own
exalted creed ; and finally, that they married the native |
women, which would thus account for the dash of the
tar-brush plainly to be read by the practised eye in
the portraits, though not in the conventional faces of the
monuments. On the other hand it may be held that
Egypt was colonised by a Berber tribe; that its civ-
ilization was entirely indigenous ; that the distinction
of classes arose from natural selection, and was after-
wards petrified by law, and that the negro traits in
the Egyptian physiognomy were due to the importa-
tion of Ethiopian girls, who have always been favour-
ites in the harems of the east. But whichever of
these hypotheses may be true, the essential point is
this, that civilisation commenced in the application
of mechanics to the cultivation of the fields, and
that this science could only have been invented under
pressure of necessity.
Let us now pass beyond the Tigris and climb up the
hills which bound it on the left. We find ourselves
on the steppes of Central Asia, in some parts lying
waste in salt and sandy plains, in others clothed with
fields of waving grass. Over these broad regions
roamed the Turks or Tartars, living on mares’ milk,
dwelling in houses upon wheels. Beyond the steppes
towards the East is another chain of hills, and beyond
¢
TURANIANS AND ARIANS. 471
them lies the Great Plain of China, watered by two
majestic rivers, the Yang-tse Kiang, and the Hoang Ho.
The people of the steppes and the mountains poured
down upon this country, subdued the savage aborigines,
covered the land with rice fields, irrigated by canals,
and established many kingdoms which were afterwards
blended into one harmonious and civilised empire.
To the right hand of the Tartar steppes as you
travel towards China, is a lofty table-land, the region
of the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes. Thence de-
scended a people who called themselves the Aryas, or
“the noble ;” they differed much in appearance from
the slit-eyed, smooth-faced, and fleshy-limbed Mon-
gols; and little in appearance, but widely in lan-
guage from the people of the table-land of the Tigris
and Euphrates. They poured forth in successive
streams over Persia, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and
the whole of Europe from the Danube and the
Rhine to the shores of the Atlantic. They also de-
scended on the Punjaub, or country of the Indus, where
they established their first colony, and thence spread
to the region of the Ganges, and over the Deccan.
They intermarried much with the native women, but
divided the men into servile castes, and kept them in
subjection, partly by means of an armed aristocracy,
partly by means of religious terror.
These then are the elemental lands; China, India,
Babylonia, and Egypt. In these countries, civilization
was invented ; history begins with them. The Egyp-
tians manufactured linen goods, and beautiful glass
wares, and drew gold, ivory, and slaves from the Sou-
dan. Babylonia manufactured tapestry and carpets.
These people were known to one another only by their
products; the wandering Bedouins carried the trade
472 THE INDIAN OCEAN.
between the Euphrates and the Nile. A caravan route °
was also opened between Babylon and India wid Bok-
hara or Balkh and Samarcand. India possessed much
wealth in precious stones, but the true resources of
that country were its vegetable products and the skilful
manufactures of the natives. India, to use their own
expression, sells grass for gold. From one kind of
plant they extracted a beautiful blue dye ; from another
they boiled a juice, which cooled into a crystal, deli-
cate and luscious to the taste ; from another they ob-
tained a kind of wool, which they spun, wove, bleached,
glazed, and dyed into fabrics transparent as the gos-
samer, bright as the plumage of the jungle birds. And
India was also the half way station between China,
Ceylon, and the Spice Islands on the one hand, and of
the countries of Western Asia on the other. It was
enriched not only by its own industry and produce,
but by the transit trade as well. At an early epoch
in history, the Chinese became a great navigating
people ; they discovered America, at least, so they say ;
they freighted their junks with cargoes of the shining
fibre, and with musk in porcelain jars; they coasted
along the shores of the Pacific, established colonies in
Birmah and Siam, developed the spice trade of the
Indian Archipelago, and the resources of Ceylon, sailed
up the shores of Malabar, entered the Persian gulf,
and even coasted as far as Aden and the Red Sea. It
was probably from them that the Banians of Guzerat and
the Arabs of Yemen acquired the arts of shipbuilding
and navigation. The Indian Ocean became a basin of |
commerce; it was whitened by cotton sails. The Phceni-
cians explored the desolate waters of the Mediterranean
Sea; with the bright red cloth, and the blue bugles,
and the speckled beads, they tempted.the savages
THE MEDITERRANEAN. 473
of Italy and Greece to trade; they discovered the
silver mines of Spain; they sailed forth through the
Straits of Gibraltar, they braved the storms of the
Atlantic, opened the tin trade of Cornwall, established
the amber diggings of the Baltic. Thus a long thread
of commerce was stretched across the Old World from
England and Germany to China and Japan. Yet, still
the great countries inthe central region dwelt in haughty
isolation, knowing foreign lands only by their products,
until the wide conquests and the superb administrations
of the Persians made them members of the same com-
munity. China alone remained outside. Egypt, Baby-
lonia, and India were united by royal roads with half-way
stations in Palestine, and Bokhara, and with sea-ports
in Phoenicia, and on the western coast of Asia
Minor. That country is a table-land belted on all
sides by mountains; but beneath the wall of hills on
the western side is a fruitful strip of coast, the estuary
land of four rivers which flow into the Mediterranean
parallel to one another. That coast is Ionia; and
opposite to Tonia lies Greece. The table-land was oc-
cupied by an Arian or Arya nation, from whom bands
of emigrants went forth in two directions. The
Dorians crossed the Hellespont, and passing through
Thrace, settled in the hill cantons of Northern Greece,
and thence spread over the lower parts of the peninsula.
The Ionians descended to the fruitful western coast,
and thence migrated into Attica which afterwards sent
_ back colonies to its ancient birth-place. These two
people spoke the same language, and were of the same
descent; but their characters differed as widely as the
cold and barren mountains from the soft and smiling
plains. The Dorians were rude in their manners, and
laconic in their speech, barbarous in their virtues,
47 4 GREECE.
morose in their joys. The Ionians lived among
holidays, they could do nothing without dance and
song. The Dorians founded Sparta, a republic which
was in reality a camp, consisting of soldiers fed by
slaves. The girls were educated to be viragoes; the
boys to bear torture, like the Red Indians, with a
smile. The wives were breeding-machines, belonging
to the state ; a council of elders examined the new-born
children, and selected only the finer specimens, in order
to keep up the good old Spartan breed. They had no
commerce, and no arts; they were as filthy in their
persons as they were narrow in their minds. But the
Athenians were the true Greeks, as they exist at the
present day ; intellectual, vivacious, inquisitive, shrewd,
artistic, patriotic, and dishonest ; ready to die for their
country, or to defraud it. The Greeks received the
first rudiments of knowledge from Pheenicia; the
alphabet was circulated throughout the country by
means of the Olympian fairs; colonies were sent forth
‘all round the Mediterranean ; and those of Ionia and
the Delta of the Nile, obtained partial access to the
arts and sciences of Babylon and Memphis. The
Persian wars developed the genius of the Greeks.
The Persian conquests opened to them the University
of Egypt. The immense area of the Greek world,
extending from the Crimea to the straits of Gibraltar,
for at one time the Greeks had cities in Morocco; the
variety of ideas which they thus gathered, and whidl
they interchanged at the great Festival, where every
kind of talent was honoured and rewarded ; the spirit —
of noble rivalry which made city contend with city,
and citizen with citizen, in order to obtain an Olympian
reputation ; the complete freedom from theology in
art: the tastes and manners of the land; the adoration
te |
NN a eee A eee SS a
ALEXANDRIA. ATS
of beauty; the nudity of the gymnasium; all these
sufficiently explain the unexampled progress of the
nation, and the origin of that progress, as in all other
cases, is to be found in physical geography. Greece
was divided into natural cantons; each state was a
fortress ; while Egypt, Assyria, India; and China were
wide and open plains, which cavalry could sweep, and
which peasants with their sickles could not defend.
But the rivalry of the Greeks among themselves,
so useful to the development of mental life, prevented
them from combining into one great nation; and
Alexander, although he was a Greek by descent, for
he had the right of contending at the Olympian games,
conquered the east with an army of barbarians, his
Greek troops being merely a contingent. But the
kingdoms of Asia and Egypt were Greek, and in Alex-
andria the foundations of science were laid. The
astrolabes which had been invented by the Egyp-
tians were improved by the Greeks and afterwards
by the Arabs, were adapted to purposes of navigation
by the Portuguese, and were developed to the sextant
of the nineteenth century. The Egyptians had in-
vented the blow-pipe, the crucible, and the alembic ;
the Alexandrines commenced or continued the pursuit
of alchemy, which the Arabs also preserved, and which
has since grown into the science of Lavoisier, and
Faraday. | Hippocrates separated medicine from
theology ; his successors dissected and experimentalised
at Alexandria, learning something no doubt from the
Egyptian school; the Arabs followed in a servile
manner the medicine of the Greeks; and the modern
Europeans, obtained from the Canon of Avicenna the
first elements of a science which has made much
progress, but which is yet in its infancy, and which
476 ROME.
will some day transform us into new beings. The
mathematical studies of the Alexandrines were also
serviceable to mankind, and the work of one of their
professors is a text-book in this country ; they dis-
covered the Precession of the Equinoxes; and the
work which they did in Conic Sections enabled Kepler
to discover the true laws of the planetary motions.
But Alexandria did not possess that liberty which is
the true source of continued progress. With slaves
below and with despots above, the mind was starved
in its roots, and stifled in its bud, dried and ticketed
ina museum. The land itself had begun to languish
and decay, when a new power arose in the west. The_
foot of Italy was lined with Greek towns, and these
had spread culture through the peninsula, among a
people of a kindred race. They dwelt in cities, with
municipal governments, public buildings, and national
schools. One Italian city, founded by desperadoes,
adopted a career of war; but the brigands were also
industrious farmers and wise politicians; they con-
ciliated the cities whom they conquered. Rome be-
came a supreme republic, ruling a number of minor
republics, whose municipal prerogatives were left undis-
turbed, who paid no tribute save military service. The
wild Gauls of Lombardy were subdued. The Greeks —
on the coast were the only foreigners who retained
their freedom in the land. They called over
Pyrrhus to protect them from the Romans; but the
legion conquered the phalanx, the broadsword van- —
quished the Macedonian spear. The Asiatic Car-
thaginians were masters of the sea; half Sicily
belonged to them; they were, therefore, neighbours
of the Romans. They had already menaced the —
cities of the southern coast; the Romans were
THE REPUBLIC. AT7
already jealous and distrustful; they had now a
Monroe doctrine concerning the peninsula: an oppor-
tunity occurred, and they stepped out into the world.
The first Punic war gave them Sicily, the second Punic
war gave them Spain, the third Punic war gave them
Africa. Rome also extended her power towards the
East. She did not invade, she did not conquer, she
did not ask for presents and taxes, she merely offered
her friendship and protection. She made war, it is
true, but only on behalf of her allies. And so king-
- dom after kingdom, province after province, fell into
her vast and patient arms. She became at first the
arbiter and afterwards the mistress of the world. Her
legions halted only on the banks of the Euphrates, and
on the shores of the Sahara, where a wild waste of
sand and a sea-horizon appeared to proclaim that life
was at an end. She entered the unknown world
beyond the Alps, established a chain of forts along the
banks of the Danube and the Rhine from the Black
Sea to the Baltic, covered France with noble cities,
and made York a Roman town. The Latin language was
planted in all the countries which this people conquered,
except in those where Alexander had preceded them.
The empire was therefore divided by language into
the Greek and Latin world. Greece, Asia Minor,
Syria, and Egypt belonged to the Greek world : Italy,
Africa, Spain, and Gaul belonged to the Latin world.
But the Roman law was everywhere in force, though not
to the extinction of the native laws. In Egypt, for
instance, the Romans revived some of the wise enact-
~ ments of the Pharaohs which had been abrogated by
the Ptolemies. The old courts of injustice were swept
away. ‘Tribunals were established which resembled
-those of the English in India. Men of all races, and
478 THE EMPIRE.
of all religions, came before a judge of a foreign race,
who sat high above their schisms and dissensions, who
looked down upon them all with impartial contempt,
and who reverenced the law which was entrusted to
his care. But the provinces were forced to support
not only a court but a city. As London is the market
of England, to which the best of all things find their
way, so Rome was the market of the Mediterranean
world; but there was this difference between the two,
that in Rome the articles were not paid for. Money,
indeed, might be given, but it was money which had
not been earned, and which therefore would come to
its end at last. Rome lived upon its principal till ruin
stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source
of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day
the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers,
carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the
East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the
Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts
brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was
their’ return cargo. London turns dirt into gold.
Rome turned gold into dirt. And how, it may be
asked, was the money spent? The answer is not
difficult to give. Rome kept open house. It gave a
dinner party every day ; the emperor and his favourites
dined upon nightingales and flamingo tongues, on
oysters from Britain, and on fishes from the Black
Sea; the guards received their rations; and bacon,
wine, oil, and loaves were served out gratis to the
people. Sometimes entertainments were given in ~
which a collection of animals as costly as that in
Regent’s Park was killed for the amusement of the
people. Constantine transferred the capital to Con-_
stantinople ; and now two dinners were given every —
ROME AND CHINA. 479
day. Egypt found the bread for one, and Africa
found it for the other. The governors became
satraps, the peasantry became serfs, the merchants
and landowners were robbed and ruimed, the empire
stopped payment, the legions of the frontier marched
on the metropolis, the dikes were deserted, and then
came the Deluge. The empire had been already
divided. There was an empire of the West, or the
Latin world ; there was an empire of the East, or the
Greek world. The first was overrun by the Germans,
the second by the Arabs. But Constantinople re-
mained unconquered throughout the dark ages; and
Rome, though taken and sacked, was never occupied
by the barbarians. In these two great cities the
languages and laws of the classical times were pre-
served ; and from Rome religion was diffused through-
out Europe; to Rome a spiritual empire was restored.
The condition of the Roman world at one time bore
a curious resemblance to that of China. In each of
these great empires, separated by a continent, the
principal feature was that of peace. Vast populations
dwelt harmoniously together, and were governed by
admirable laws. The frontiers of each were threatened
by barbarians. The Chinese built a wall along the
outskirts of the steppes; the Romans built a wall
along the Danube and the Rhine. In China, a man
dressed in yellow received divine honours ; in Rome, a
man dressed in purple received divine honours; in
each country the religion was the religion of the state,
and the emperor was the representative of God. In
each country, also, a religious revolution occurred.