OUR DAY

VOL. IX.-NOVEMBER, 1892.—No. 59.

AFRICA AT THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION.

I.

WHY should Africa be represented at the Columbian Exposition, and, especially, among its World's Congresses? What part has the Dark Continent ever played in human story that it is deemed worthy of consideration in the Parliament of Man during 1893? What events in its modern history, and what new outlook in its prospects justify the devotion of so much time and thought to that lost land? Why an African Congress rather than an Asiatic or Australian or South American Congress?

In the first place, Africa is ceasing to be the lost and hopeless continent. Though the interior has been a land of darkness since the dawn of time, more has been accomplished in the last eighty years to acquaint the world with this continent -its geography, peoples, resources than in the eighteen centuries preceding. Of no other continent could such a statement be made. Even at the birth of Christ the interior of Asia and of Europe was well enough known for all practical purposes of commerce. America, north and south, had been coasted and explored and threaded within a single century after discovery until the Amazon was better known than the Nile, and the Mississippi had been navigated for far longer reaches than the Congo. Australia, latest found and possessed, was comprehended both without and within more.

quickly than any other continent known to man. But Africa, though face to face with Europe and linked to Asia, still stood isolated and unique till the search-lights of the nineteenth century spoiled even the eternal forests of their secrets in Darkest Africa. To-day the civilizing agencies and influences of Christendom girdle the continent, and are founding lighthouses of civilization amid inland seas of savagery. Finally, the partition of Africa among the powers of Europe has brought ten-twelfths of its area within alien spheres of influence. No such stupendous spoliation was ever before attempted in all human history, unless we except Pope Alexander's division of worlds unknown between Portugal and Spain; and the nations are looking on to see what shall be the outcome of the desired conquests. Whether they will be mainly nominal or largely actual, whether peaceful or martial, are great and difficult questions which the twentieth century will have to decide during the course of its Christian endeavors to fulfill Victor Hugo's prediction, and to make a world out of Africa. But whatever the settlement, and however great or little the measure of its success, we are soon to see such a struggle in Africa between civilization and savagery as humanity has not known since the sword of the Spaniard smote the barbarism of Mexico. Modern history will know no lack of epic element, dramatic episode and romance of chivalry so long as civilization is striving to wheel this majestic continent of Africa-second only to Asia among Earth's brood of Titans-into the world's march of progress.

In the next place, Africa, though long an alien if not an outlaw from the commonwealth of nations, has played a great part in ancient history. The usual impression, still too prevalent, has been that in the sphere of history Africa has been a Sahara; but the view is about as correct as the old-time thought of the Great Desert. In Africa civilization had its birth. Egyptian and Hykshos and Persian and Hellene and Roman and Saracen and Frank and Turk and Saxon have in turn seized the serpent of old Nile. The Father of the Faithful, and the Prince of Israel, and the Founder of the Hebrew Theocracy sought shelter in the shadow of the Pyramids.

Egypt saved the Christ-child from death. Cyrene of Africa gave Simon as Africa's first cross-bearer. The Eunuch of Ethiopia was the first African to receive baptism. Apollos of Alexandria was the first African mighty in the Scriptures. Its bishop, Athanasius, saved to Christianity its faith that Christ is very God of God. Near the ancient mistress of the seas, Rome and Carthage settled whether the civilization of the West and the future should be Shemitic or Aryan, enslaved and stagnant, or free and progressive. In Africa Augustine thought out the problems of fate, free-will and man's return to God. There Tertullian wrought out a theory of the church. Thus Africa was of old bound by a thousand streams of life to the current of the world's advance, and contributed forces of its own to civilization and Christianity. When the Pharos of Alexandrine culture fell in the storm of Moslem conquest, the twin allies were beaten back from Afric coasts for a millennium. But even so the pure-blooded negro as well as the "Bantu," independent of Arab influences, showed native capacity for self-elevation and for material advancement. In the Soudan, i. e., "Land of Blacks," Arabs found"fortified towns, well organized governments, large standing armies, prisons, police and sumptuary laws, considerable division of labor, periodical markets, regular shops and all the appliances, showing some progress in civilization." In Dahomey we find "a finished system of classes, six in number; complex governmental arrangements, with officials always in pairs; an army divided into battalions, having reviews and sham fights; prisons, police and sumptuary laws; an agriculture which uses manure and grows a score of plants; moated towns, bridges, and roads with turnpikes." To the same effect is Schweinfurth's testimony concerning the Monbuttu, while of the Wa-Ganda Sir Samuel Baker wrote: "Passing suddenly from the wildest savagedom to semicivilization, we come to U-Nyoro where they have developed administration, sub-governors, taxes, good clothing, art, agriculture, architecture." When we remember that such progress has been made in the teeth of surroundings, both natural and artificial, most adverse to spontaneous self-improvement,

we must accord to negro civilizations a respect scarcely less than that which we yield to the historically non-significant semi-civilizations of the Aztec and the Inca and the Iroquois and the Zuñi.

Through the death of the Byzantine Empire came the birth-pains of modern Europe, the discovery of a new world beyond the Atlantic Sea-of-Darkness, and the re-discovery of old worlds. Within fifty years after the Crescent crushed the Cross at Constantinople, Portugal pushed past Africa's cape of storm and torment, named it forever Cape of Good Hope, and won the wealth of Ind. Africa had at last begun to be brought again within the pale. Though the messengers of civilization have, in the main, been only too Christless for four centuries, yet He in whose sight a thousand years are as a day, had anew stretched forth His hand to Ethiopia. The church of Rome soon sent missionaries to Abyssinia. Portugal planted herself in Congo and on the Zambezi and in Zanzibar. Elizabeth's gallant knight, Sir John Hawkins, imitated Portugal's half-English son, glorious Prince Henry the Navigator, in inaugurating the African slave trade, and thus binding America with Ethiopia in a fellowship of sin and sorrow. Pitiful enough, in all conscience, was the outcome of those "missions," and small honor do they reflect upon "civilization" and "Christianity." Yet in the perspective of four hundred years, we can see a divine Providence in it all, and have learned that the Almighty was stronger than Satan. Is it not most fit that the old-and-new African world should be discussed in the new world which Columbus gave to Spain while Portugal was circumnavigating Africa; and discussed during the fourth centennial year since the supreme seaman sailed the western wave?

A third reason why an African Ethnological Congress is appropriate and timely at the Columbian Exposition is to be found in the scientific importance and significance of the dark continent at the present day. Nowhere else in the world have the anthropologist and the ethnologist a field at once so vast and virgin, offering so great and rich opportunities, as in Africa. What was the original type of the prehistoric

immigrant whose mixture with the aborigines produced the "Bantu" of equatorial and southern Africa? Whence came he? Was he a Hamite from the highlands of Asia Minor, or a Dravidian from Hindostan, or, as Stanley fancies, an offshoot of Aryan Hindus? Is the Hottentot a degraded descendant of the ancient Egyptians, split off, say five thousand years ago, from the bulk of his mighty nation by the wedge of invasion inserted by the Asiatic ancestors of the "Bantu," so that he was driven southward for centuries until crowded into the southernmost corner of the continent; or is he a survivor of a race akin to the aboriginal ancestors of the Chinese? Is the true negro a son of the African soil, or has he any genetic relationship with black Australians and Papuans? In what points of character is he superior to the Aryan and the Shemite? Such are a few of the puzzles and riddles for scientists to solve. In philology there is work enough on hand to busy scholars for a hundred years. Who knows but what the secret of the origin of speech and language may have light shed upon it by the investigations of Professor Garner among the manlike apes of Africa? Though the lay of the land in this philological field has been largely grasped, yet the character and capacity and connection of hundreds of languages remain to be investigated, while the difficulties of the task are immeasurably increased by the lack of native literatures. Physical geography and economic geology have yet much to do in giving us intimate and detailed knowledge of great areas in the interior, so that merchants and statesmen may have accessible and practical information as to its resources, populations and potentialities. Political and social science are asking: What were the characterizing influences of the Portuguese, Arab and Hindu contacts with the rim of the continent? Are Africa's resources so transcendent as to reward the reciprocities of commerce? Does she offer an outlet for the overcrowded populations of India or China? Are the nations indebted to Africa for material benefits? What European nationalities shall become dominant there? languages, what religions, what forms of the civil state shall prevail? What results will come from this Babel mixing of