the aboriginal people remain secluded amid their mountains and forests, in a state of instinctive existence,—­a state from which, history informs us, that human races have hardly emerged, until moved by some impulse from without.  Neither Phoenician nor Roman culture seems to have penetrated into Africa beyond the Atlantic region and the desert.  The activity and enthusiasm of the propagators of Islam have reached farther.  In the fertile low countries beyond the Sahara, watered by rivers which descend northward from the central highlands, Africa has contained for centuries several Negro empires, originally founded by Mohammedans.  The Negroes of this part of Africa are people of a very different description from the black pagan nations farther towards the South.  They have adopted many of the arts of civilized society, and have subjected themselves to governments and political institutions.  They practise agriculture, and have learned the necessary, and even some of the ornamental, arts of life, and dwell in towns of considerable extent; many of which are said to contain ten thousand, and even thirty thousand inhabitants,—­a circumstance which implies a considerable advancement in industry and the resources of subsistence.  All these improvements were introduced into the interior of Africa three or four centuries ago; and we have historical testimony, that in the region where trade and agriculture now prevail the population consisted, previous to the introduction of Islam, of savages as wild and fierce as the natives farther towards the south, whither the missionaries of that religion have never penetrated.  It hence appears that human society has not been in all parts of Africa stationary and unprogressive from age to age.  The first impulse to civilization was late in reaching the interior of that continent, owing to local circumstances which are easily understood; but, when it had once taken place, an improvement has resulted which is, perhaps, proportional to the early progress of human culture in other more favored regions of the world."[58]

But in our examination of African tribes we shall not confine ourselves to that class of people known as Negroes, but call attention to other tribes as well.  And while, in this country, all persons with a visible admixture of Negro blood in them are considered Negroes, it is technically incorrect.  For the real Negro was not the sole subject sold into slavery:  very many of the noblest types of mankind in Africa have, through the uncertainties of war, found their way to the horrors of the middle passage, and finally to the rice and cotton fields of the Carolinas and Virginias.  So, in speaking of the race in this country, in subsequent chapters, I shall refer to them as colored people or Negroes.

FOOTNOTES: 

[56] Earth and Man, pp. 300-302.

[57] It is a remarkable fact, that the absence of salt in the food of the Eastern nations, especially the dark nations or races, has been very deleterious.  An African child will eat salt by the handful, and, once tasting it, will cry for it.  The ocean is the womb of nature; and the Creator has wisely designed salt as the savor of life, the preservative element in human food.