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.

This is not the place to enlarge upon this extraordinary piece of
history. The best account of the empire of Songhay is to be found in the
pages of Barth, the German traveler, who had access to what seemed to him
a credible Arab history. Considerable light is thrown upon it by a recent
volume on Timbuctoo by M. Dubois, a French traveler. M. Dubois finds
reason to believe that the founders of the Songhese empire came from
Yemen, and sought refuge from Moslem fanaticism in Central Africa some
hundred and fifty years after the Hejira. The origin of the empire is
obscure, but the development was not indigenous. It seems probable that
the settlers, following traders, penetrated to the Niger valley from the
valley of the Nile as early as the third or fourth century of our era. An
evidence of this early influence, which strengthened from century to