Africa and the Discovery of America. Volume II. By Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, Pa. 1922.

Professor Wiener, in the second volume of his series Africa and the Discovery of America, deals exhaustively with the documentary information relating to "the presence in America of cotton, tobacco and shell money, before the discovery of America by Columbus.... The accumulative evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of an introduction of the articles under discussion from Africa by European or Negro traders, decades earlier than 1492." (Foreword, p. ix.)

The importance, for the history of Pre-Columbian civilization, of these discoveries cannot be overestimated. Moreover, their significance is not concerned alone with the history of America. They will compel a revision and realignment of historical frontiers in Europe and Africa as well, from a date not later than the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Lastly, "Africa and the Discovery of America" forms, as it were, a sequel to Professor Wiener's Contributions toward a History of Arabico-Gothic Culture, enabling the historian to trace the influence of the Arabs as the torch-bearers of civilization. It was they who in the eighth century, through the medium of the Spanish Mozarabs, recreated European culture, and at a later period, through that of the Arabicised Negroes, of whom the West African Mandingoes were the most important, at least almost entirely re-created, if they did not actually create, the civilization of the native American tribes, throughout both continents, and planted, so to speak, in the New World, the seeds of two great modern industries, cotton and tobacco.

Let us then consider, first, what is the bearing of Professor Wiener's work on the history of cotton. Assyria and India were centers of cotton culture at a very early date. The evidence that the Arabs popularized cotton in Africa, in connection with the ceremonial purification of the dead, that is, stuffing the orifices of the body with cotton, is shown by the fact that Arabic 'utb "cotton," a loan word from Coptic tbbe "to purify," has produced the West African "cotton" words, exactly as Arabic wudu' "ablution" has given rise, doubtless through Hausa influence, to the "cotton" words of Nigeria. What is particularly important to note, however, is that Arabic qutn "cotton" has gone everywhere into the Mandingo dialects, which have, in turn, influenced the native American languages. Thus for example, in South America, the Mandingo kotondo, etc., "cotton," derived from Arabic qutn, has left derivatives in the Indian languages "from Venezuela south to Peru, and in Central Brazil" (page 80), beside derivatives from Kimbunou mujinha "cotton," in eastern Brazil, northward and westward. If we concede the presence of cotton in South America before Columbus, we can only conclude, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that it was introduced either directly or indirectly from Africa. The Aztec word ychca, the native Mexican word for "cotton," furnishes no proof that cotton was known to the Mexicans before the coming of the Spaniards, since ychca is not originally a specific name, but has reference to any kind of fibre,—of a fluffy character, and came to mean "cotton" only secondarily.

Columbus, however, reported that on Oct. 11, 1492, the Indians of Guanahani brought parrots and cotton thread in balls, to trade for beads and hawks' bills. Either he told the truth, or he did not. If he told the truth, it is still remarkable that the Indians should not only have known of the traders' demand for cotton and parrots, but should also have offered the very articles which Cada Mosto, nearly fifty years earlier, had mentioned as coming from Africa, particularly the cotton, then offered for sale in the Negro markets. Columbus's references to growing cotton are specific in declaring that the cotton grew on trees,—hence it is obvious that he did not see any true cotton growing, but only the false cotton, the product of the tree Bombax Ceiba, used for stuffing mats, but not capable of being spun (page 28). A study of the early records of Mexico is conclusive in the evidence it furnishes to show that cotton never formed part of the tribute due the Mexican emperor, but that the payment of tribute in cotton was "an innovation of the Spaniards, and did not have the sanction of the Aztec tribute" (page 56). Hence we have nothing to indicate that, either in the Indies or in Mexico, the material of which the "cotton clothing" of the natives, mentioned by the Spaniards, was made, was really cotton. If it was cotton, its presence points to contact between America and Africa before Columbus, and the readiness of the natives to offer cotton in exchange for hawks' bills testifies clearly to the extent of trade relations between the two countries.

The contention of archÆologists is that cotton culture in Peru may go back to a date as early as 200 A.D. The only criterion for such an assumption rests on the theoretical rate of accumulation of guano deposits, in which mummies, wrapped in cotton, have been found,—calculated at two and one half feet per century. This conclusion is absurd, not only for the stress it lays on the capricious habits of sea-birds, but also for the reason that it fails to take into account the irregularity of the guano deposits, as shown in the Peruvian Government Survey of 1854. No conclusion whatever as to the age of even a single mummy-case can be drawn, owing to certain facts concerning Indian burial customs, recorded by Cieza de Leon in 1553, Ondegardo in 1571, and Cobo, nearly a century later. These travellers state that the Peruvian natives were accustomed to open graves, change the clothes of the dead from time to time, and re-bury them (page 67 ff.). The proof that they told the truth is contained in the report by Baessler, of the X-ray examinations of Peruvian mummy-packs in the Royal Museum at Berlin. One such pack contains "the bones of four separate individuals, but of none there were enough to construct even distantly one complete skeleton. Besides, there were some animal bones present" (page 71). This disinterment of bodies, and of course the same confusion of the remains, revealed by the X-ray, was practised by the Indians as late as 1621. Nothing then remains to militate against the linguistic testimony so strongly in support of the conclusion that South American cotton culture is of African origin.

Professor Wiener's tentative conclusion that tobacco smoking was of African origin, outlined in his first volume of this series, has been strongly reinforced by a study of the Old-World origin of capnotherapy. "Smoking for medicinal purposes," he says on page 180, "is very old, and goes back at least to Greek medicine. A large number of viscous substances, especially henbane and bitumen, were employed in fumigation, and taken through the mouth, sometimes through the nose, for certain diseases, especially catarrh, toothache and pulmonary troubles. This fumigation took place through a funnel which very much resembles a modern pipe, but by its knot-like end at the bottom of the bowl shows its derivation from the distilling cap of the alchemist's retort." The bitumen corresponds to the tubbaq or tobbaq of the Arab doctors, a name applied to several medicinal plants containing a pungent and viscous juice. One of these plants was known in Spain as tobbaqah.

Fumigation as a curative measure soon degenerated in Europe into quackery,—the Arab smoke doctor giving place to the itinerant charlatan whose Arabic name lingers in Portuguese bufarinheiro "peddler," originally "smoke vender." In Africa, medical fumigation spread southward through the Negro country, finding its way to America perhaps a full century before the coming of Columbus. The manner in which smoking was introduced into America is made clear by the history of the Negro pombeiro, the African bootlegger in the service of the Portuguese colonists, who taught the natives to drink pombe, a kind of intoxicating liquor. This word pombe is a corruption of Latin pulpa, which through the Spanish pulpa has persisted in Mexico as pulque, the name of an intoxicant used by the Indians, exactly as Arabic hashish, through Spanish chicha, has entered Nahuatl, producing the Nahuatl chichila "to ferment, etc." The method of preparing the chicha in Peru, by masticating grain, is clearly of African origin, since in the Sudan, a kind of drink is made by chewing the fruit of the baobab. The clearest proof, however, that such pombeiros reached America in Pre-Columbian days is found in Columbus's reference to the report by the Indians of Hispaniola, that "black people had come thither from the south and south east, with spearheads of guanin." Now guanin is a Mandingo word; the name of an alloy of 18 parts of gold, 6 of silver and 8 of copper.

The history of shell and bead money, familiar as the wampum of the northern Indians, forms the third part of the present volume, and is perhaps the source of the strongest arguments to show the Pre-Columbian relation of Africa and America. Ultimately, the use of cowry shells for money comes from China, where such shells, called pei, tze-pei, pei-tze, had been used from time immemorial. The Chinese name of the cowry, ho-pei, probably anciently pronounced something like ka-par, is evidently the origin of Sanskrit kaparda, Hindustani kauri (whence English cowry), Dravidian kavadi "cowry." "From the ninth century on, we have many references in the Arabic authors to the cowries in Asia and Africa" (page 208). It is quite to be expected, then, that in the Negro languages, we should find derivatives of this ultimately Chinese word, descended through the medium of successive borrowings, via Hindustani and Arabic,—that is, Hausa al-kawara, kawara, etc., Zanzibar kauri, Wolof korre, Bambara kori, etc., side by side with a group descended from Dravidian woda "shell,"—that is Hausa wori, Malinke wuri, Bambara wari.

The substitution of beads for shells, as the development of this primitive form of currency went on, has left its mark likewise in linguistic records. That is to say, we have in Africa a group of words descended ultimately from Chinese par, pei, originally meaning "cowry," and secondarily "bead," together with a new group, traceable through an Arabic intermediary stage to Persian sang "onyx," the bead-stone par excellence. From the cowry-words have come Benin cori, kori, koli, "blue bead," whence akori, the "aggry" bead of the white traders, Neule gri "beads," and Baule worye "blue bead," a loan-word from Mandingo wori. In Bantu zimbo, we have either a Bantu plural of abuy, itself a derivative of Maldive boli, bolli, which is the Chinese pei "cowry," or a direct loan-word, through Arabic or Portuguese influence, of Chinese tsze-pei "purple shell." The transference in meaning from "cowry" to "bead" is illustrated in Kaffir in-tsimbi "beads." Similarly, the original "bead" words, from Persian sang "onyx," have given Zanzibar, Swahili ushanga "bead," Kongo nsanga "string of blue beads," with a recession of meaning in Kongo nsungu "cowry shell."

The transference of African currency to America is shown by two significant facts. First, we have the name. In the Brazilian caang "to prove, try," caangaba "mould, picture, etc.," is to be seen a form of some African derivative of Persian sang, as seen in Zanzibar ushanga "bead," Kongo nsanga "blue beads," etc., the change of meaning leading to the connotation "mould" being due to the substitution of the European idea of money as a piece of stamped metal, in place of that of bead or shell money. Exactly as the petun words for tobacco spread from South to North America along the trade routes, so the words for "money" followed the same course. Jacques Cartier's word esnogny, given as the Indian name of shell money,—the shells actually gathered by an African method of fishing for shell-fish with a dead body,—is traceable only to some form of the Brazillian Çaang, which has also given Gree soniwaw "silver," Long Island sewan "money." The Chino-African cowry-word, seen in African abuy, is preserved in the North American bi, pi (plural peag, peak) "wampum," side by side with the Guarani mboi, poi, "shell bead." Lest the reader still harbor a lingering doubt of the fact of early trade relations between Brazil and Canada, Professor Wiener shows how Spanish aguja "needle" has left derivatives in a large number of Indian languages distant by many hundreds of miles from any Spanish settlement.

Secondly, we have the standard of value. From the earliest times, in China, the purple cowry was more valuable than the white. The same standard prevailed in Africa, and was transferred to the beads when beads were substituted for cowries. Among the Indians, the blue, or dark colored currency, whether shells or beads, was consistently reckoned as superior in worth to the white. Shell-money was first popularized on Long Island by the Dutch, who, as we are informed, imported cowries and aggry beads from the East to sell them to the Guinea-merchants. Moreover, Gov. Bradford has stated that it took the Massachusetts colonists two years to teach the Indians to use shell or bead money. Finally, Professor Wiener concludes that "in the Norman country, ... the wampum belt, as a precious ornament for European women, had its origin, and was by the Frenchmen transferred to Brazil and Canada" (page 258).

The fifteen full-page illustrations serve well to bring home much of the force of the arguments, even to a casual reader.

Phillips Barry, A.M., S.T.B.

Groton, Massachusetts.

The Negro Press in the United States. By Frederick G. Detweiler. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1922. Pp. 274.

Struck by the number and distribution of Negro magazines and newspapers, many investigators in the social sciences have recently directed their attention to the study of the Negro press. This increased interest resulted largely from the unusual impetus given the Negro press during the World War when it played the part of proclaiming the oppression of the Negroes to the nations pretending to be fighting for democracy when they were actually oppressing their brethren of color at home. And why should not the public be startled when the average Negro periodical, formerly eking out an existence, became extensively circulated almost suddenly and began to wield unusual influence in shaping the policy of an oppressed group ambitious to right its wrongs? These investigators, therefore, desire to know the influences at work in advancing the circulation of these periodicals, the cause of the change of the attitude of the Negroes toward their publications, their literary ability to appreciate them, the areas of their greatest circulation, and the attitude of the white people toward the opinion of this race.

While it is intended as a sort of scientific work treating this field more seriously than Professor Robert T. Kerlin's The Voice of the Negro, it leaves the impression that the ground has not been thoroughly covered. In the first place, the author does not show sufficient appreciation of the historic background of the Negro press prior to emancipation. He seems acquainted with such distinguished characters as Samuel Cornish, John B. Russwurm, and the like but inadequately treats or casually passes over the achievements of many others who attained considerable fame in the editorial world. In any work purporting to be a scientific treatment of the Negro press in the United States the field cannot be covered by a chapter of twenty pages as the author in question has undertaken to do. Furthermore, many of the underlying movements such as abolition, colonization, and temperance, which determined the rise and the fall of the Negro editor prior to the Civil War, are not sufficiently discussed and scientifically connected in this work. The book, then, so far as the period prior to the Civil War is concerned, is not a valuable contribution.

The author seemed to know more about the Negro press in freedom. Living nearer to these developments he was doubtless able to obtain many of these facts at first-hand and was able to present them more effectively. He well sets forth the favorite themes of the Negro press and the general make-up of the Negro paper, but does not sufficiently establish causes for this particular trend in this sort of journalism. Taking up the question of the demand for rights, the author explains very clearly what the Negro press has stood for. Then he seemingly goes astray in the discussion of the solution of the race problem, Negro life, Negro poetry, and Negro criticism, which do not peculiarly concern the Negro editor more than others in the various walks of life. Looking at the problem from the outside and through a glass darkly, as almost any white man who has spent little time among Negroes must do, the work is about as thorough as most of such investigators can make it and it should be read by all persons directing attention to the Negro problem.

The Disruption of Virginia. By James C. McGregor. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1922. Pp. 328, price $2.00.

This book was written, according to the author, as an attempt to present an unbiased account of the strange course of events in the history of Virginia from the time of Lincoln's election to the presidency to the time of the admission of West Virginia into the Union. It is, however, more of a polemic than an historical contribution. The author raises this very question himself by his declaration that he has no grudges to satisfy and no patrons to please. "If he seems harsh in his opinions and conclusions regarding the irregular and inexpedient methods employed in cutting off the western counties of Virginia and forming them into a new State," says he, "it is due to the conviction that an unnecessary wrong was committed, a wrong that helped not at all in Lincoln's prosecution of the Civil War." The author is convinced that not only was the act unconstitutional but that it was not desired by more than a small minority of the people of the new State. He believes that the President and Congress, being grateful to the Union men in northwestern Virginia for their loyalty to the Union, rewarded them by giving their consent to the organization of a new State which, nevertheless, was in violation of the principles of the Constitution.

Unlike Professor C. H. Ambler who, in his Sectionalism in Virginia, has set forth in detail the differing political interests of the sections of Virginia, this author reduces it to a mere exploit on the basis that the end justified the means. Furthermore, the author differs widely from C. G. Woodson who in an unpublished thesis similarly entitled The Disruption of Virginia, presented in 1911 to the Graduate School of Harvard University in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, emphasized the economic differences as the underlying causes. Dr. McGregor minimizes such causes by reducing his treatment of the economic situation to a single chapter of ten pages. He then briefly discusses the opening of the breach, the Constitutional Convention of 1829-30 and the growth of sectionalism between that Convention and the Civil War. Approaching the main feature of the work, the author takes up the preliminaries of the Convention of 1861, the various conventions of the northwestern counties out of which evolved the organization of the new State of West Virginia, and finally the question of admission before Congress.

Why such a work could be considered necessary and accepted as a contribution in this particular field when valuable works have already been written upon this subject, is justified by the author on the ground that he has discovered considerable new material which convinces him that the new State movement in West Virginia was unrepresentative of the majority of the people of the northwestern counties but was put through in dictatorial fashion by a militant minority. It is true that some new material has been added to this work, but it hardly convinces well informed historians that the far-reaching and sweeping conclusion of the author are justified by the few additional facts which he has been able to find. Almost a causal study of the history of Virginia shows that the western part of the State became estranged from the eastern because their economic interests were different and the authorities failed to make the improvements necessary to connect these sections and thus unify such interests. By the time of the Civil War the northwestern counties were commercially connected with the North and West and accordingly followed these in that upheaval.

A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages. Volume II. By Sir Harry H. Johnston, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., Sc.D. (Cambridge). The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922. Pp. 544.

This work is the result of a study of the Bantu languages commenced by the author in 1881 in the Library of the British Museum, and instigated by the project of accompanying the Earl of Mayo on an exploratory expedition in South West Africa, Angola and the countries south and east of the Kunene River. The expedition, according to the author, was extended by him to the upper Congo thanks to the assistance offered by H. M. Stanley. With this large view of Africa his studies were continued with little intermission during the forty years which followed his first introduction into that continent. Even the World War itself was not exactly an interruption but permitted the author to extend the scope of his research by bringing him into closer acquaintance with certain of the western Semi-Bantu languages through the presence in France of contingents of Senegambian troops. The Colonial office, moreover, assisted the work by requesting its officials in British West Africa to examine the Semi-Bantu languages of British Nigeria, South-west Togoland, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Furthermore, an important discovery of two Bantu languages was made in the southern part of the Anglo-Egyptian province of Bahr-al-ghazal. He is indebted to Mr. Northcote W. Thomas's researches which revealed new and interesting forms of Semi-Bantu speech in the Cross River districts of Southern Nigeria. In the comparison of roots, moreover, the author had considerably more material to draw on than in the case of the first volume. He found also much more information concerning Homa and BaÑgminda through Major Paul Larkin and Captain White. These are the chief features which, he believes, make the second volume a valuable contribution.

In spite of the extensive investigation, however, the author still finds a good deal about which he is not certain. About many of these languages he knows little regarding their structure and grammar. In other words they have been studied merely from the outside. In spite of his extensive travels, moreover, he had so much to do and apparently such a short time in which to accomplish his task that this work, as valuable as it is, can be considered no more than an introductory treatise going a little further into a field inadequately explored. Already he says he finds that he has been reproached for not bringing within the scope of these two volumes a group of languages in the North-east Togoland and Kisi and the Limba tongues of Sierra Leone. Yet although he finds that these have some Bantu features, they were too mixed to justify their treatment here. He found resemblances of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu families elsewhere but not closely enough akin to require their treatment in connection with this work.

Beginning with a treatment of the enumeration and classification of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu languages, the work reviews the languages illustrated in Volume I. Attention is directed to the Bantu in various regions of the continent. The author then discusses the phonetics and phonology of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu languages, prefixes, suffixes, and concords connected with the noun in Bantu and Semi-Bantu, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, the verbs and verb roots. The maps graphically show the probable origins and lines of migration of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu languages and their distribution in Central and South Africa.

On the whole, the world is indebted to Sir Harry H. Johnston for his enumeration and classification of these tongues, although the work merely marks the beginning of a neglected task. Until some scholar with better opportunities to carry forward this research has produced a more scientific treatise, the works of the author will be referred to as interesting and valuable volumes.