chapter it may be said that the location of the mass
of the Negro farmers has been indicated, and also the fact that there is
a separation between the whites and the blacks which promises to have
important bearing on future progress, while the various agricultural
districts offer opportunities by no means uniform.

CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC HERITAGE.

=IN PLOWING TIME.=

Previous to the appearance of the European, West Central Africa for
untold hundreds of years had been almost completely separated from the
outside world. The climate is hot, humid, enervating. The Negro tribes
living in the great forests found little need for exertion to obtain the
necessities of savage life. The woods abounded in game, the rivers in
fish. By cutting down a few trees and loosening the ground with
sharpened sticks the plantains, a species of coarse banana, could be
made to yield many hundred fold. The greater part of the little
agricultural work done fell on the women, for it was considered
degrading by the men. Handicrafts were almost unknown among many tribes
and where they existed were of the simplest. Clothing was of little
service. Food preparations were naturally crude. Sanitary restrictions,
seemingly so necessary in hot climates, were unheard of. The dead were
often buried in the floors of the huts. Miss Kingsley says: "All
travelers in West Africa find it necessary very soon to accustom
themselves to most noisome odors of many kinds and to all sorts of
revolting uncleanliness." Morality, as we use the term, did not exist.
Chastity was esteemed in the women only as a marketable commodity.
Marriage was easily consummated and with even greater ease dissolved.
Slavery, inter-tribal, was widespread, and the ravages of the slave
hunter were known long before the arrival of the whites. Religion was a
mass of grossest superstitions, with belief in the magical power of
witches and sorcerers who had power of life and death over their
fellows. Might was right and the chiefs enforced obedience. It is not
necessary to go more into detail. In the words of a recent writer:

"It is clear that any civilization which is based on the fertility
of the soil, and not on the energy of man, contains within itself
the seed of its own destruction. Where food is easily obtained,
where there is little need for clothing or houses, where, in brief,
unaided nature furnishes all man's necessities, those elements
which pro