Before going further, and in order to avoid misunderstanding, it is proper to say that I have the firmest belief in the ultimate development of all mankind into a higher plane than it occupies now.  I should otherwise be in despair.  This faith will never desist in the effort to bring about the end desired.

But, if we work with Providence, we must work in the reasonable ways of Providence, and add to our faith patience.

It seems to be the rule in all history that the elevation of a lower race is effected only by contact with one higher in civilization.  Both reform and progress come from exterior influences.  This is axiomatic, and applies to the fields of government, religion, ethics, art, and letters.

We have been taught to regard Africa as a dark, stolid continent, unawakened, unvisited by the agencies and influences that have transformed the world from age to age.  Yet it was in northern and northeastern Africa that within historic periods three of the most powerful and brilliant civilizations were developed,—­the Egyptian, the Carthaginian, the Saracenic.  That these civilizations had more than a surface contact with the interior, we know.  To take the most ancient of them, and that which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carried their conquests and their power deep into Africa.  In the story of their invasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on temple walls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave.  This contact may not have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but it proves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with a superior civilization.  In later days we find little trace of it in the home of the negro, but in Egypt the negro has left his impress in the mixed blood of the Nile valley.

The most striking example of the contact of the negro with a higher civilization is in the powerful medieval empire of Songhay, established in the heart of the negro country.  The vast strip of Africa lying north of the equator and south of the twentieth parallel and west of the upper Nile was then, as it is now, the territory of tribes distinctly described as Negro.  The river Niger, running northward from below Jenne to near Timbuctoo, and then turning west and south to the Gulf of Guinea, flows through one of the richest valleys in the world.  In richness it is comparable to that of the Nile and, like that of the Nile, its fertility depends upon the water of the central stream.  Here arose in early times the powerful empire of Songhay, which disintegrated and fell into tribal confusion about the middle of the seventeenth century.  For a long time the seat of its power was the city of Jenne; in later days it was Timbuctoo.