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Frobenius, perhaps fancifully, identified this African coast with the Atlantis of the Greeks and as part of that great western movement in human culture, "beyond the pillars of Hercules," which thirteen centuries before Christ strove with Egypt and the East. It is, at any rate, clear that ancient commerce reached down the west coast.
Perhaps no race has shown in its earlier development a more magnificent art impulse than the Negro, and the student must not forget how far Negro genius entered into the art in the valley of the Nile from Meroe and Nepata down to the great temples of Egypt. Frobenius has recently directed the world's attention to art in West Africa. Quartz and granite he found treated with great dexterity.
The Thermometers dipt into Water, or Spirit of Wine, in the same Manner, suffer not the least Alteration. They who chuse to see a further Account of the singular Effects which this curious Fluid produces, may peruse what Doctor Frobenius, a German Chemist, has published concerning it, in the Philosophic Transactions for the Years 1733 and 1741. Particular Directions for using the AETHER.
Frobenius expressed his astonishment at the originality of the African in the Yoruba temple which he visited. "The lofty veranda was divided from the passageway by fantastically carved and colored pillars. On the pillars were sculptured knights, men climbing trees, women, gods, and mythical beings.
Islam did not found new states, but modified and united Negro states already ancient; it did not initiate new commerce, but developed a widespread trade already established. It is, as Frobenius says, "easily proved from chronicles written in Arabic that Islam was only effective in fact as a fertilizer and stimulant.
African religion does not, however, stop with fetish, but, as in the case of other peoples, tends toward polytheism and monotheism. Among the Yoruba, for instance, Frobenius shows that religion and city-state go hand in hand.
Frobenius thinks these were relics dating from past ages of culture, when the manipulation of quartz and granite was thoroughly understood and when iron manipulation gave evidence of a skill not met with to-day. Even when we contemplate such revolting survivals of savagery as cannibalism we cannot jump too quickly at conclusions.
Here the gout soon left him, but he was seized by a dysentery, and after labouring a whole month under that disorder, died on the 22nd of July, 1536, in the house of Jerome Frobenius, son of John, the famous printer. He was honourably interred, and the city of Basil still pays the highest respect to the memory of so great a man.
The articles in the latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica are of some value, except the ridiculous article on the "Negro" by T.A. Joyce. Frobenius' newly published Voice of Africa is broad-minded and informing, and Brown's Story of Africa and its Explorers brings together much material in readable form.
He cured John Frobenius, the printer, Erasmus's friend, at Basle, when the doctors were going to cut his leg off. His fame spread far and wide. Round Basle and away into Alsace he was looked on, even an enemy says, as a new AEsculapius.
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