Africanus

“ And Africanus, in the third book of his History, writes: Now the first Olympiad recorded—which, however, was really the fourteenth—was the period when Corœbus was victor; [2] at that time Ahaz was in the first year of his reign in Jerusalem. ”

“ I have not hesitated to claim for Theophilus of Antioch a primary place among Christian chronologists. It is no detraction from the fame of our author to admit this, and truth requires it. But the great Alexandrian school must again come into view when we speak of any considerable achievements, among early Christian writers, in this important element of all biblical, in fact, all historical, science. Africanus was a pupil of Heraclas, and we must therefore date his pupilage in Alexandria before a.d. ”

“ Far away, toward the other side of the round earth, far to the east and south of America, lies the great continent of Africa. There live many people strange to us, with their black skins, kinky, woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips. These black people we call Africans or negroes, and it is a little child among them that we are going to visit by and by.
Different as these African people of the negro race are from us, who belong to the white race, they yet belong to the same great family, as we say. ”

“ Some other facts, which I may state in brief terms, are scarcely less remarkable. In Africa, there are Negro nations,—that is, nations of intensely black complexion, as the Jolofs, Mandingoes, and Kafirs, whose features and limbs are as elegant as those of the best European nations. While we have no proof of Negro races becoming white in the course of generations, the converse may be held as established, for there are Arab and Jewish families of ancient settlement in Northern Africa, who have become as black as the other inhabitants. ”

“ In certain tropical regions it has already been observed by ethnologists that tribes inhabiting elevated regions in the interior are superior to those dwelling on low tracts on the sea-coast, the superiority being manifest both in mental and bodily qualities. ”

“ If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,—and come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human improvement.—life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. In that far-off mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and waving palms, and wondrous flowers, and miraculous fertility, will awake new forms of art, new styles of splendor; and the negro race, no longer despised and trodden down, will, perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most magnificent revelations of human life. ”

“ So in Africa, the work of these settlements, colonies, and mission, is being done by Negroes. Some of these came from the British West Indies: numbers of them are recaptured Africans, trained in English schools: thousands of them are American black men, educated in the missions of Liberia, or amid the institutions and in the schools of this country: and all of whom, thus enlightened, are Presidents, Judges, Senators, Merchants, Civilians, Planters, and a host of Priests, and Deacons, and Catechists—sons of Africa! How mighty is the hand of God in the affairs of earth! ”

“ In Africa, the home of the negro, there has been a monotonous repetition of the same old facts which historians learned from monumental inscriptions and indestructible tablets thousands upon thousands of years old.
The African negro has always been a distinct type, an inferior type, a savage type, a non-progressive type. ”

“ If the soil of Africa is turned up today by the colonist's plough share, no ancient weapon will lie in the furrow; if the virgin soil be cut by a canal, its excavation will reveal no ancient tomb; and if the ax effects a clearing in the primeval forest, it will nowhere ring upon the foundations of an old world palace. Africa is poorer in record history than can be imagined. 'Black Africa' is a continent which has no mystery, nor history! ”

“ No one could stand on Cape Mesurado, and see the intermingled churches and houses; the broad expanses of interior waters, bordered by residences, and see a people elevated far, very far, to say the least, above those of their color in other parts of the world, without the consciousness that a great work was begun. To meet everywhere the dark-browed men of Africa, solely the governors of it all, indicated a great fact in the history of the negro race. ”

“ The answers of some natives who had been taken to England after a trip across Africa were instructive as showing the trend of a negro's mind. Questioned as to what appeared most wonderful to them, one replied: "The white man, when he wants anything, goes to the wall; then he obtains what he requires, light, drink, servants--in fact, everything." Another replied: "The selling-houses with rows and rows of meat, countless sheep and lumps of meat." ”

“ We both felt what means the strong hand of a masterful race—the stronger when it withholds from smiting. I had seen a good example of one of the ways by which the wild men of Africa have been shaped to the habits of their masters. Such a scene as I have sketched is happily possible in only a limited part of the South—that in which there is a great body of negroes who have not yet been to any extent influenced by civilizing contact with the whites. ”

“ Africa produces blacks—ivory blacks—they get ivory. It also produces deserts, and that is the reason it is so much deserted by travellers. Africa is famed for its roses. It has the red rose, the white rose, and the neg-rose. Apropos of negroes, let me tell you a little story."
Then he at once diverged from the subject of Africa to retail to his audience his amusing story of the Conversion of a Negro, which he subsequently worked up into an article in the Savage Club Papers, and entitled "Converting the Nigger." ”

“ Unprotected from the perpendicular rays of the sun, the African is black, muscular, and cheerful; under the shadow of primeval forest, man assumes a coppery hue, lacking the endurance of the negro, and becomes in disposition cold and melancholy. ”

“ A cursory reading of this literature discloses at once that our general knowledge of Africa has been based in the past mainly on those external facts that strike the sense of sight, such as the physical appearance of the population, native dress and handiwork, musical instruments, implements of warfare, and customs peculiar to the social and religious life of the people. Only through the folk literature, however, can we get a glimpse of the working of the mind of the African Negro. ”

“ But it is not only in Africa that the Negro has exhibited the absence of the essential qualities of a progressive race. It is everywhere. Since the dawn of history, the Negro has been in one place or another, in Egypt, in Rome, in other European countries, brought in contact with civilization, yet he has failed to receive the vitalizing current under which other races have risen in greater or less degree. ”

“ Let us begin by studying the scientific works of the African explorers and stop reading and believing the silly slush which ignorant missionaries put into our heads about the alleged degradation of our people in Africa. Let us learn to know Africa and Africans so well that every educated Negro will be able at a glance to put his hand on the map of Africa and tell where to find the Jolofs, Ekois, Mandingoes, Yorubas, Bechuanas or Basutos and can tell something of their marriage customs, their property laws, their agriculture and systems of worship. ”

“ You must understand that these tracts of land which have been taken possession of by the European powers are not by any means deserted or uninhabited lands. On the contrary, many of them teem with people, and these lands on the west of Africa are especially populous. You must bear in mind that the extensive slave trade which existed for so many years was carried on with the west coast of Africa.
Many of these black people are intelligent races of men, and all are divided into tribes and kingdoms governed by rulers and kings. ”

“ CHAPTER VI. THE AFRICAN COLONIES. Africa, like Europe and America, evidences a commingling of different stocks: the blacks are not all black, nor all woolly-haired; the Africans pass through all shades, from that of a light Berber, no darker than the Spaniard, to the deep black of the Iolofs, between Senegal and Gambia.
The traces of red men or copper-colored races are found in many parts of the continent. Prichard divides the true negroes into four classes ”

“ As a matter of fact, there are several native races, varying in color from the intensely black and uncouth Guinea Negro of the West Coast to the olive-brown Arabs of the Sahara desert, and in civilization from the primitive dwarf tribes of Central Africa to the organized kingdoms of the Zulus and the thriving states of the Central lake region. Many arguments as to the negro character are based upon the supposed profound barbarism and cannibalism of all Africa. ”

“ Endowed with a rich tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of Nature, the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and devils, elves and witches; full of strange influences,—of Good to be implored, of Evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of Evil over him. ”

“ Negroes, the dark race of tropical Africa, distinguished by their dark woolly hair, their black eyes, their flat noses, and their thick lips; they occupy rather a low level in the scale of humanity, and are lacking in those mental and moral qualities which have impressed the stamp of greatness on the other races that have distinguished themselves in the history of the world. ”

“ The Black Race.—Africa south of the Sahara is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents and on many of the islands of the seas, whither they have migrated or been carried as slaves by the stronger races ”

“ Right on the threshold I was met by conditions which are unique in Africa, with possibly the exception of Abyssinia; for here the white man comes under the rule of the black, and any attempt at evasion or disregard of it is quickly and forcibly resented, as I witnessed immediately on stepping ashore. Among a crowd of blacks was a white man held powerless. ”

“ That black Africa will, ere long, be about all red, about all British—at least in language, in sentiment, in human sympathy, in social, industrial and political methods and aspiration, if not in allegiance—can hardly be doubted ”

“ Two important groups, however, remain predominant in regions very far apart, but each well suited to their vigorous development. The negro of Africa has been made the servant of the more civilized races from the earliest periods of history, and is better known to us than any other uncivilized people; while the Papuan or Melanesian, inhabiting a group of tropical islands on the other side of the globe, still remains a mere shadowy name to the great majority of English readers. ”

“ There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself. ”

“ I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. ”

“ It is something singular that the colored race—those in reality most interested in the future destinies of Africa—should be so lightly affected by the evidences continually being presented in favor of colonization. He will do a service to this country as well as Africa who shall do any thing to open the eyes of the colored race to the advantages of emigration to the fertile and, to them, congenial shores of Africa. ”

“ During my childhood my observations were centered upon a few very old negroes who came directly from Africa, and upon many others whose parents were African born, and I early came to the conclusion, based upon negro authority, that the greater part of their music, their methods, their scale, their type of thought, their dancing, their patting of feet, their clapping of hands, their grimaces and pantomime, and their gross superstitions came straight from Africa. ”

“ The Negro tribes of Africa have frequently been supposed to belong to an inferior race of Men, an opinion founded—partly on an inadequate conception of the progressive character of the Human species—partly on ignorance of the progress which many Negro nations have actually made. ”

“ The nobler-spirited of them feel deeply their state of humiliation, and the more intelligent of them to perceive the only remedy for it. Africa, the home of their fathers, calls to them across the sea, and spreads her arms to welcome them. ”

“ There is a significant phrase frequently used in those parts, that such a white man is grown black. It does not intend an alteration of complexion, but of disposition. I have known several in Africa who gradually became assimilated to the tempers, customs, and ceremonies of the natives so far as to prefer that country to England. They have also become dupes to all the pretended charms, necromancies, and divinations of the blinded Negroes ”

“ The Negro forms an exceptional race in Africa. He inhabits that immense tract of marshy land which lies between the mountains and the sea, from Senegal to Benguela, and the low lands of the eastern side in the same manner. ”

“ There, too, the Black man and the Red, whose destinies seemed to separate them wide as the world’s hemispheres, have been brought together to try whether the African is more enduring than the indigenous American on his own soil; to try for us, also, as could no otherwise be tried, questions of amalgamation and hybridity, of development and perpetuity of varieties, of a dominant, a savage, and a servile race. ”