system was organized on the lines of a representative republic.  True, it is on record that these well-governed towns often waged an internecine warfare; but in spite of this it had been their invariable custom from time immemorial, even in times of strife, to keep the trade routes open and to allow their own and foreign merchants to go their ways unharmed.  And the commerce of these nations ebbed and flowed along a road of unknown age, running from Itimbiri to Batubenge, about six hundred miles in length.  This highway was destroyed by the ’missionaries of civilization’ from Arabia only toward the close of the eighteenth century.  But even in my own time there were still smiths who knew the names of places along that wonderful trade route driven through the heart of the ‘impenetrable forests of the Congo.’  For every scrap of imported iron was carried over it."[65]

In disposition the Negro is among the most lovable of men.  Practically all the great travelers who have spent any considerable time in Africa testify to this and pay deep tribute to the kindness with which they were received.  One has but to remember the classic story of Mungo Park, the strong expressions of Livingstone, the words of Stanley and hundreds of others to realize this.

Ceremony and courtesy mark Negro life.  Livingstone again and again reminds us of “true African dignity.”  “When Ilifian men or women salute each other, be it with a plain and easy curtsey (which is here the simplest form adopted), or kneeling down, or throwing oneself upon the ground, or kissing the dust with one’s forehead, no matter which, there is yet a deliberateness, a majesty, a dignity, a devoted earnestness in the manner of its doing, which brings to light with every gesture, with every fold of clothing, the deep significance and essential import of every single action.  Everyone may, without too greatly straining his attention, notice the very striking precision and weight with which the upper and lower native classes observe these niceties of intercourse."[66]

All this does not mean that the African Negro is not human with the all-too-well-known foibles of humanity.  Primitive life among them is, after all, as bare and cruel as among primitive Germans or Chinese, but it is not more so, and the more we study the Negro the more we realize that we are dealing with a normal human stock which under reasonable conditions has developed and will develop in the same lines as other men.  Why is it, then, that so much of misinformation and contempt is widespread concerning Africa and its people, not simply among the unthinking mass, but among men of education and knowledge?

One reason lies undoubtedly in the connotation of the term “Negro.”  In North America a Negro may be seven-eights white, since the term refers to any person of Negro descent.  If we use the term in the same sense concerning the inhabitants of the rest of world, we may say truthfully that Negroes have been among the leaders of civilization in every age of the world’s history from ancient Babylon to modern America; that they have contributed wonderful gifts in art, industry, political organization, and religion, and that they are doing the same to-day in all parts of the world.