dealers encourage them in this
vanity; and, seeing that they go to the collectors and dealers for their
information, I suppose one ought not to be surprised when journalists
come out with their astounding attributions. The facts are as follows.

We know that Portuguese adventurers had a considerable influence on
African art in the sixteenth, and even in the fifteenth, century. There
begins our certain knowledge. Of work so influenced a small quantity
exists. Of earlier periods we know nothing precise. There are oral
traditions of migrations, empires, and dynasties: often there is
evidence of past invasions and the supersession of one culture by
another: and that is all. The discoveries of explorers have so far
thrown little light on archaeology; and in most parts of West and
Central Africa it would be impossible even for trained archaeologists to
establish a chronological sequence such as can be formed when objects
are found buried in the sand one above the other. But, in fact, it is to
vague traders and missionaries, rather than to trained archaeologists,
that we owe most of our fine pieces, which, as often as not, have been
passed from hand to hand till, after many wanderings, they reached the
coast. Add to all this the fact that most African sculpture is in wood
(except, of course, those famous products of early European influence,
the bronze castings from Benin), that this wood is exposed to a
devastating climate--hot and damp--to say nothing of the still more
deadly white ants, and you will probably agree that the dealer or
amateur who betickets his prizes with such little tags as "Gaboon, 10th
century" evinces a perhaps exaggerated confidence in our gullibility.

Whenever these artists may have flourished it seems they flourish no
more. The production of idols and fetiches continues, but the production
of fine art is apparently at an end. The tradition is moribund, a
misfortune one is tempted to attribute, along with most that have lately
afflicted that unhappy continent, to the whites. To do so, however,
would not be altogether just. Such evidence as we possess--and pretty
slight it is--goes to show that even in the uninvaded parts of West
Central Africa the arts are decadent: wherever the modern white man has
been busy they are, of course, extinct. According to experts Negro art
already in the eighteenth century was falling into a decline from some
obscure, internal cause. Be that as it may, it was doomed in an