century, Dubois finds in the architecture of Jenne and Timbuctoo. It is
not Roman or Saracenic or Gothic, it is distinctly Pharaonic. But
whatever the origin of the Songhay empire, it became in time Mohammedan,
and so continued to the end. Mohammedanism seems, however, to have been
imposed. Powerful as the empire was, it was never free from tribal
insurrection and internal troubles. The highest mark of negro capacity
developed in this history is, according to the record examined by Barth,
that one of the emperors was a negro.

From all that can be gathered in the records, the mass of the negroes,
which constituted the body of this empire, remained pagan, did not
become, except in outward conformity, Mohammedan and did not take the
Moslem civilization as it was developed elsewhere, and that the
disintegration of the empire left the negro races practically where they
were before in point of development. This fact, if it is not overturned
by further search, is open to the explanation that the Moslem
civilization is not fitted to the development of the African negro.

Contact, such as it has been, with higher civilizations, has not in all
these ages which have witnessed the wonderful rise and development of
other races, much affected or changed the negro. He is much as he would
be if he had been left to himself. And left to himself, even in such a
favorable environment as America, he is slow to change. In Africa there
has been no progress in organization, government, art.

No negro tribe has ever invented a written language. In his exhaustive
work on the History of Mankind, Professor Frederick Ratzel, having
studied thoroughly the negro belt of Africa, says "of writing properly so
called, neither do the modern negroes show any trace, nor have traces of
older writing been found in negro countries."