Das unbekannte Afrika (Unknown Africa). By Leo Frobenius. (O. Beck, MÜnchen, 1923.)

The war has fettered Frobenius to his country and his desk, and he has found time to study his material, and the series of diaries, written every day while in Africa. Ten volumes of folklore, three volumes of Atlas Africanus, several philosophical books, and this one under discussion, have been the fruits of his unwelcome restraint. Frobenius is now preparing another book, "The dying Africa." Many of his collections have gone to the various museums, but he has a large number of interesting objects, and many thousands of pictures which are contained in his recent publications, and, at last, made known.

Each chapter of Das unbekannte Afrika is headed by small maps showing the distribution of the cultural elements treated in it. This is the form of registration which Frobenius has practiced for the last 25 years. Thus the enormous wealth of ethnological data is statistically fixed. The area, for instance, for a house type or a custom, when found in his travels, is compared with data found, in literature, on the same subject, and all the findings are, again, registered on a map. The results of seven expeditions, on which skilled artists accompanied him, have been kept under control in this manner. As soon as the center of a district which seemed of interest was reached, numerous trained assistants were sent in different directions. Each took notes and pictures on a given subject, so that a marvelous amount of work could be accomplished. Other data were gained by leaving questionnaires among the resident missionaries, merchants, or government officials, to whom letters were sent later, where matters did not seem sufficiently clear, when studied at home.

The deductions made are illustrated by the fascinating pictures contained in The unknown Africa, in which more than half of the space is devoted to illustrations. By them the interrelation between Neolithic European, Asiatic, Phoenician, Carthaginian, and the African cultures is shown, mainly in regard to art and architecture.

African art is nearer related to the prehistoric European than to the Asiatic and the American. On the whole, that of the south is historic, as compared with that of northwestern Africa. Linguistically the south African idioms are the oldest, while the illiterate eastern constitutes the second period, and the northwestern the youngest.

Racially the lighter Hamite in the northwest has displaced older types, which are now prevalent in the east. The Hamitic culture extends between the Canaries and the Indian Ocean, with extensions into Abyssinia and the southern apex. In the south dwell the Ethiopians. Originally there were two main points of cultural influx, one in Erythraea, and one on the western shores, having travelled through the Mediterranean and Gibraltar, around northwestern Africa. Some influence was also introduced from the north, and traversed the Sahara desert. There it did not survive, but penetrated the Soudan.

The two cultures are explained distinctly. The Hamitic contains remnants of the solar cult, while the Ethiopian shows that of the moon. The first has the matriarchal while the second has the patriarchal system. Hamitic inclinations are connected with the animal world, the Ethiopian with Mother Earth and the plant. Proofs for the entry of Hamitic elements by way of Erythraea are found in the fact that the matriarchate has existed on the eastern coast of India, and in southern Arabia, and that it still exists in northern Africa. Also, the ritual killing of the kings which exists near the White Nile, and in the eastern Soudan, was reported, by Diodorus, to have existed on the eastern coast of India and in Meroe.

The Nile kept Egypt in touch with the rest of the civilized world, while the western parts of northern Africa had no great stream to retain the ancient height of culture, but this tended to the guarding of traditions, and the preservation of ancient customs.

The same ritual procedure which is depicted on the rock-drawings, thousands of years old, prevails in these days in western Soudan. The same posture is taken by the supplicant huntsman, in regard to the cardinal points, while he traces similar images on the sand. The present-day pious Yoruba consults the replica of boards which were found in Ife, and which were thousands of years old. On them are carved the four main pairs of deities, or the sixteen cardinal points.

Frobenius found ancient terra-cotta heads and wood carvings which represented the same objects as those found in Benin. The latter must be considered as mediaeval. The pupils of the Benin heads are perforated, while the Ilife heads have blind eyes. This would affix, to the latter, a much greater age, as it is a feature of ancient Mediterranean sculpture. The Atlantic art of western Africa is highly developed, and has nothing in common with primitive Negro art. Some of the boards are exquisite, and rows of beautiful figures and mythological representations are carved on a door, in Yoruba, as shown in the book.

A very interesting theory is put forth, in this connection. So far, it was accepted that time, in archaeology, could be measured only by stone objects, as these were lasting. The author, however, is of the opinion that rock drawings and carvings may answer the aesthetic or ritual requirements of a region or a people for many centuries, while wooden implements and works of art must be replaced, being eminently perishable. Wood is available everywhere. The idea underlying a figure is renewed, with each generation of carvers, and the traditions are handed down as faithfully by wooden carvings as by folk-lore.

Drawings, in the strict sense of the word, are found, in Africa, only in ancient Egypt. They are more closely related to the Bushman paintings of South Africa than to the petrography of the western parts of the continent. Hamitic rock drawings, with depressed lines of contour, and tinted in the intervening surfaces, are seen in Egypt. Prehistoric and early historic figures were found in Egypt, Lesser Africa, and the Guinea Coast. In the east the lines are generally severe, while in the northwest they are rounded. The Hamitic culture zone has no plastic art, among Berber, Bisharin, Somali, Masai, and Hottentot. The Bushman who drew the beautiful rock ornaments has produced no plastic. What is found among this tribe must be considered as Carthaginian.

The primitive Hamite fears representations of the human and animal, from magic. Later the plastic representations have, however, penetrated the Hamitic boundaries, and reached the Nile. The peoples of Lesser and North Africa do not recognize what is on the rocks. The Negro is not gifted in this sense. The Hamite who does not readily see a drawing or picture, and never seems to have produced plastic art, draws well, realistically or ornamentally. The Negro is a good carver but draws very badly. Even those Negroes who recognize every photograph and carve excellently cannot draw.

Many deductions are made in studying the migration of cultures, and many parallels are shown up. One of the relationships found is that between the tattooing of the Neolithic Period of France and that of the living individual near the Niger. The lines run from the ear to the nose. Another well-known feature is the figure of the obese woman which extends from France to Malta. It is quite prevalent in Hamitic art, in the graphic productions of northern Africa, and in Egyptian plastic. Steatopygy, in the living, is natural to the South African tribes. The deduction made is that those models which seemed desirable to the artist, during the stone age of the northwest, still exist in the south. Therefore Hamitic culture must have wandered from the north, east and south.

Other stone-age elements, the stone graves, are found in the Hamitic regions. In Morocco the stone tumuli are explained as remnants of the houses of forebears. When food ran low, goes the tale, the head of the family collected all its members about him, and tore the home down, over them.

Two main types of dwellings are found in Africa, one a cave, the other a pile structure. The Hamitic culture prefers the first, the Ethiopian the latter. The oldest Hamitic "chthonic" bed is a pit. The oven and storehouse is built in the ground. The inhabitants of the Canary Islands, who are the descendants of the ancient Guanches, and most of the Kabyle tribes of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis still have artificial caves, which are, however, not generally known. In Matamata, in the south of Tunis, tunnel-shaped, honeycomb dwellings constitute the newer type of cave dwelling.

Ethiopian "telluric" architecture uses the pile in the construction of beds, huts for guards, dwelling houses, and meeting places. The edifices are round or rectangular, and thatched. Later the thatch is covered with clay. Fortresses are constructed of clay and rafters. In parts of the Soudan the walls are beautifully ornamented with reliefs of humans and animals, or geometrical figures. In the interior of the houses the clay walls are tinted and polished, and the pictures show many beautiful decorative designs.

Beatrice Bickel

A History of the United States Since the Civil War. By Ellis Paxon Oberholtzer. In five volumes. Volume II, 1868-1872. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922. Pp. XI, 649. $4.00.)

This is the second of five volumes of a history of the United States since the Civil War to be completed by this author. Covering the period from 1868 to 1872, this treatise deals in detail with the Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, international questions resulting from the Civil War, the building of railroads, and Oriental problems.

It is not usual, however, to find one publishing such a large and expensive volume as this for the purpose of giving merely the author's opinion about the problems of that day and the shortcomings of the men who were trying to solve them. Not unlike most writers on the Reconstruction, this author endeavored to commend those who achieved as he would have them and to condemn those who addressed themselves to these tasks in a different way. In most places, however, he found many to censure and few to praise. If the book has any purpose at all, it is intended not as a history of the period but a survey of the corruption and vice of the age. Very little of the malfeasance in positions of public trust escaped the attention of this writer.

Beginning with President Grant himself, the author has tried to show that there was little of virtue and efficiency among public functionaries of that time. He refers to Grant as being ignorant, stupid, and simple, holds up to scorn James G. Blaine, and questions Garfield's connection with Credit Mobilier in the style characteristic of the book. Other crimes to the credit of the leading statesmen of that day are given detailed treatment. The book abounds in so many recriminations and epithets belaboring the most distinguished men of the time that the uninformed reader would expect something like the fall of Rome to follow.

If the white people with all their advantages had degenerated to such a low level, the reader might wonder why the author should make any comment at all on the corruption of the Negroes in the South. Inasmuch as they had not been generally educated and had been denied participation in civic affairs, he might have excused them for abandoning work to enjoy their freedom, stealing from their former masters, and obtruding themselves socially upon haughty persons of the old regime. In the same style, however, the Negroes are given their share of vilification. "He refers to them as 'Sambo' and 'Cuffee' entering the halls of government, and a 'Coal Black' member made temporary chairman," "'The Black Crook Convention,' 'Ring-tailed Coons,' 'Outlaws and Rag-a-muffins,' and a 'Gang of Jailbirds.'"

All of these expressions are not original with the author. They are taken from southern newspapers and books of the same sort of authorship. Instead of using such evidence only when known to be unconscious, the author has accepted this information as the truth. According to the requirements of modern historiography, newspapers are generally valuable only in determining the sentiment of the people except when the evidence obtained is unconscious. Furthermore, the author has too often accepted second-hand information, found in books of writers who have produced treatises on the Reconstruction for the express purpose of vilifying the Negroes who participated in that drama, and to justify the high-handed action of the whites who through such invisible powers as the Ku Klux Klan overthrew the liberal governments, and re-established the power of the aristocracy of the South. It is unreasonable to suppose that orators and editors interested in disfranchising and re-enslaving the Negroes would tell the truth about the freedmen.

It is most unfortunate that writers have accepted the point of view of these biased authors instead of making a research for the facts in the case. In too many instances, this author quotes Fleming for facts of Reconstruction in Alabama, Hamilton for North Carolina, Ficklen for Louisiana, Garne for Mississippi, Ramsdell for Texas, Reynolds for South Carolina, Davis for Florida, Eckenrode for Virginia, Thompson for Georgia, and the like. These "authorities" do not strengthen the claims of a work because of the very bias with which these books were written, for these writers accepted rumors, violent newspaper comments, and inflammatory speeches as reasons for their conclusions. Any history built upon such authority cannot be considered trustworthy.

From the point of view of the Negro himself, this book is not a history of the United States for the period which it purports to cover. It has very little to say about the Negroes except to refer to them as an ignorant, illiterate mass of thieves and rascals. In a work covering merely four years, a seeker of the truth would expect some information therefrom as to how the freedmen began their social and economic stride upward, what forces were set to work among them, and how susceptible they proved to be of the training offered in the schools and churches established for their special needs. Inasmuch as he found so much space for the Carpet-Baggers who went South to control the State governments through the Negro vote, it would have hardly been out of place for the author to mention that throng of apostles who came South as teachers to give their lives as a sacrifice in the uplift of these belated people. What these Negroes did, during these very years, to help themselves should have received some consideration. Every Negro of consequence in the South was not a politician or an office-seeker. What the race is accomplishing today is due in a large measure to the foundation laid at that time by Negroes of foresight, who acquired education and property and joined the missionary teachers from the North in the noble effort for the education and economic amelioration of the freedmen.

The Partition of Africa. By Sir Charles Lucas, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1922. Pp. 228.)

This book consists of the lectures given by the author at the Royal Colonial Institute to a circle of teachers of the London County Council in 1921. The author disclaims any pretension to exhaust the subject. He acknowledges that these lectures are somewhat discursive with the intention of suggesting diverse points of view and a variety of subjects for further study. With this purpose in mind he freely quotes a number of books and papers, evidently desiring to stimulate the reader to further study. It is admitted, moreover, that while these lectures have been awaiting publication there has taken place in Africa so many developments that this volume will not suffice to inform the reader.

The work begins with a survey of Africa in ancient times as it connected with the Mediterranean World. Unfortunately, in this chapter the author follows the well-beaten path of misrepresenting that land by referring to it as the "Dark Continent," which, from his point of view, was dependent and backward because it had no facilities of communication with Europe. In this chapter, therefore, he proves not that Africa had not made much advancement but that the European was merely ignorant of that part of the world.

In the chapter discussing "Africa from Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century" there is little more than a casual sketch of the invasion of the Vandals, the Mohammedan conquest, followed by a rather brief and unscientific discussion of the natives of Africa. This chapter, however, presents in epitome the leading facts of the explorations of Europeans beginning with Prince Henry of Portugal, the forerunner of other adventurers from England, Italy, Spain and France.

Taking up the slave trade, the author becomes a little more interesting. He discusses the question from two points of view, distinguishing between the Mohammedan slave trade and the European traffic in men on the West Coast of Africa. He undertakes to give the causes of the West African slave trade in terms of the commercial revolution. Then follows a more detailed account of the participation therein by various European nations. In this connection is treated also the effort of philanthropic Europeans who exposed the horrors of the slave trade and finally abolished it. Further efforts for the improvement of the Negroes are traced to the establishment of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The author then shows how this interest in the Negro, developing along with European expansion into Africa, led to further exploration and settlement and to the missionary enterprise of David Livingston. The interest in the uplift of the natives, however, as the book admits, was lost sight of after the Franco-German war, the prelude to the scramble for Africa. Then came the beginning of Belgian Congo, the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1884, the general acts of the Berlin Conference, the Congo atrocities, and the partition of the continent into Northeast-Africa, East-Africa, South-Africa, West-Africa and other spheres of influence. There followed also another sort of scramble in building African railways, tapping the wealth of the hinterland of Africa. The bearing of the Anglo-French Convention of 1904, the Franco-German Agreement of 1911 and other European treaties are all set forth.

Discussing North-Africa, the author first makes a comparison of the situation in the different parts of the continent, allowing for such influences as the proximity of that portion of the continent to Europe, the effect of the orientalization of Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, Tripoli, and Morocco. This discussion, however, is not carried out in all of its ramifications and the reader must make further investigation for adequate information.

In Chapter VIII the author reviews the settlements of the Dutch in South-Africa, the British occupation of the Cape, the conflict of the British and the Dutch, the rise of the Boer Republic, and the Kaffir wars. In keeping with so many writers who endorse almost anything which Europeans do, this author finds some justification for the intrusion of the Europeans in Africa. The cruel oppression visited upon the natives as a result of this conquest does not cause the author any grief. In the same way, he discusses the conquest and settlements of France and Great Britain in West-Africa, their dependencies, and methods of development. Treating the late campaigns in Africa, the author makes an effort to bring this information up to date as far as possible, trying to account for the territorial settlement in that continent as shown by the reconstructed map of Africa. The book closes with a discussion of such African problems as the elimination of Germany from Africa, the plurality of powers in Africa as an advantage to the Africans in bringing about mutual checks, and the effect of the World War upon the relation between whites and blacks.

A Boy's Life of Booker T. Washington. By W. C. Jackson, Vice President of the North Carolina College for Women, and Professor of History, Greensboro. (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1922. Pp. 147.)

The author does not pretend to add anything new to what is generally known about Booker T. Washington, or to what may be found in such works as Up from Slavery, My Larger Education, and Booker T. Washington: Builder of a Civilization. The aim is to tell this story in such simple language as to make it comprehensible for children. The author hopes that by reading this book some of them may be inspired to higher ambition and encouraged to nobler effort. While the reader may not agree with all of the observations made by the author, he must commend this effort to popularize the record of the distinguished citizen who by his achievement demonstrated that the race has within it the possibilities of other groups. This effort, then, has an important bearing on the dissemination of information concerning the Negro and on the preservation of the records of the race.

The details of the life of the subject of the sketch are omitted except that the interesting beginnings of Booker T. Washington as a boy, and his rise through poverty and ignorance to a position of leadership, are given with some degree of thoroughness. The author endeavors to impress upon the youth the bravery, courage, backbone, energy, fair-mindedness, honesty, wisdom, intelligence, judgment, modesty, patriotism, will power, self control, and love of humanity of Booker T. Washington. To do this, each important trait in the man is portrayed by reference to some achievement which served as a striking example of his character. In this way, the author draws upon his planning for an education, school days at Hampton, beginning life in the outside world, first efforts at teaching, the beginning of Tuskegee, early hardships, struggles to raise money, speech-making, leadership, political experiences, and travels abroad.

The book is well printed and neatly bound. It is also adequately illustrated so as to concentrate the attention of the youth on certain important achievements and events in the life of Washington. Among these illustrations appear the monument recently unveiled at Tuskegee, which constitutes the frontispiece of the book. Then follow various illustrations of the many activities of the institution. While there is not given a general view of the whole school, the various groups given will impress the reader with the magnitude of the work undertaken at Tuskegee. The cuts of Washington and his family show the home life of the man.