supposed, this African culture had to do with early exploration and
colonization in America. The first of these three facts is very
important, but is now generally accepted and need not here detain us.
For the present purpose the second and third demand more attention.

The development of native African art is a theme of never-ending
fascination for the ethnologist. Especially have striking resemblances
between Negro and Oceanian culture been pointed out. In political
organization as well as certain forms of artistic endeavor the Negro
people have achieved creditable results, and especially have they been
honored as the originators of the iron technique.[1] It has further been
shown that fetichism, which is especially well developed along the
West Coast and its hinterland, is at heart not very different from the
manitou beliefs of the American Indians; and it is this connection that
furnishes the key to some of the most striking results of the researches
of the latest and most profound student of this and related problems.[2]

[Footnote 1: Note article "Africa" in _New International Encyclopedia_,
referring especially to the studies of Von Luschan.]

[Footnote 2: Leo Wiener: _Africa and the Discovery of America_, Vol. I,
Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, 1920.]

From the Soudan radiated a culture that was destined to affect Europe
and in course of time to extend its influence even beyond the Atlantic
Ocean. It is important to remember that throughout the early history of
Europe and up to the close of the fifteenth century the approach to the
home of the Negro was by land. The Soudan was thought to be the edge of
the then known world; Homer speaks of the Ethiopians as "the farthest
removed of men, and separated into two divisions." Later Greek writers
carry the description still further and speak of the two divisions as
Eastern and Western--the Eastern occupying the countries eastward of the
Nile, and the Western stretching from the western shores of that river
to the Atlantic Coast. "One of these divisions," says Lady Lugard, "we
have to acknowledge, was perhaps itself the original source of the
civilization which has through Egypt permeated the Western world....
When the history of Negroland comes to be written in detail, it may be
found that the kingdoms lying toward the eastern end of the Soudan were
the home of races who inspired, rather than of races who received, the
traditions of civilization associated for us with t