too, the genuine African of the interior bears no resemblance to the accepted Negro type as it figures on drug and cigar store signs, wearing a shabby stovepipe hat, plaid trousers, and a vari-colored coat.  A stroll through the corridors of the Berlin Museum of Ethnology teaches that the real African need by no means resort to the rags and tatters of bygone European splendor.  He has precious ornaments of his own, of ivory and plumes, fine plaited willow ware, weapons of superior workmanship.  Justly can it be demanded ’What sort of civilization is this?  Whence does it come?’”

It is also pointed out that one of the most important contributions to the civilization of mankind was very probably made by the Negro race.  This was the invention of the smelting of iron.  The facts brought forward to support this view are:  that no iron was smelted in Europe before 900 B.C.; that about 3000 B.C., there began to appear on the Egyptian monuments pictures of Africans bringing iron from the South to Egypt; that at a time considerably later than this iron implements began to appear in Asia; that there is no iron ore in Egypt; and that in Negro Africa iron ore is abundant.  In many places it is found on top of the ground and in some parts it can be melted by simply placing a piece of ore in the fire very much as you would a potato to be roasted.

Studies in the fields of ancient and medieval history are also showing that in the past there were in Negro Africa civilizations of probable indigenous origin which attained importance enough to be mentioned in the writings of the historians and poets of those periods.  The seat of one of the highest of these civilizations was Ethiopia.  Here the Negro nation attained the greatest fame.  As early as 2,500 years before the birth of Christ the Ethiopians appeared to have had a considerable civilization.  It was well known to the writers of the Bible and is referred to therein some forty-nine times.  In Genesis we read of Cush, the eldest son of Ham.  Cush is the Hebrew word for black and means the same as Ethiopia.  One of the most famous sons of Cush was Nimrod, whom the Bible mentions as being “a mighty hunter before the Lord; whereof it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.”  The Bible refers to Ethiopia as being far distant from Palestine.  In the book of Isaiah we read “the land of the rustling of wings which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia that sendeth ambassadors by the sea.”  The rivers of Ethiopia mentioned in Isaiah are the upper tributaries of the Nile, the Atbara, the Blue Nile and the Sobat.

The later capital of Ethiopia was Meroe.  Recent excavations have shown Meroe to have been a city larger than Memphis.  The Temple of Ammon, where kings were crowned, was one of the largest in the valley of the Nile.  The great walls of cut stones were 15 feet thick and 30 feet high.  Heaps of iron-slag and furnaces for smelting iron were discovered, and there were magnificent quays and landing places on