f antiquity, the name of this
distant people is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full
of them; the nations of inner Asia, on the Euphrates and Tigris, have
interwoven the fictions of the Ethiopians with their own traditions of the
conquests and wars of their heroes; and, at a period equally remote, they
glimmer in Greek mythology. When the Greeks scarcely knew Italy and Sicily
by name, the Ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets; they
spoke of them as the 'remotest nation,' the 'most just of men,' the
'favorites of the gods,' The lofty inhabitants of Olympus journey to them
and take part in their feasts; their sacrifices are the most agreeable
of all that mortals can offer them. And when the faint gleam of tradition
and fable gives way to the clear light of history, the luster of the
Ethiopians is not diminished. They still continue the object of curiosity
and admiration; and the pens of cautious, clear-sighted historians often
place them in the highest rank of knowledge and civilization."

Of these facts most modern historians know but little and Negroes in
general almost nothing. For example, how many have ever heard of Al-Bekri,
the Arab writer, who in the eleventh century wrote a description of the
Western Sudan of such importance that it gained him the title of "The
Historian of Negro Land"? How much, by means of research, might be learned
of the town of Ghana situate on the banks of the Niger, which the historian
Al-Bekri described as a meeting place for commercial caravans from all
parts of the world? This town, he said, contained schools and centers of
learning. It was the resort of the learned, the rich, and the pious of all
nations. Likewise, most of us have never heard perhaps of another Arab
writer, Iben Khaldun, who in writing about the middle of the fourteenth
century of Melle, another of the kingdoms of the Sudan, reported that
caravans from Egypt consisting of twelve thousand laden camels passed every
year through one town on the eastern border of the empire on their way to
the capital of the nation. The load of a camel was three hundred pounds.
12,000 camel loads amounted, therefore, to something like 1,600 tons of
merchandise. At this time we are told that there was probably not a ship in
any of the merchant navies of the world which could carry one hundred tons.
250 years later the average tonnage of the vessels of Spain was 300 tons
and that of the English much less. The l