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First comes ancient Guinea, then, modern Sierra Leone and Liberia; then follow the various "coasts" of ancient traffic the grain, ivory, gold, and slave coasts with the adjoining territories of Ashanti, Dahomey, Lagos, and Benin, and farther back such tribal and territorial names as those of the Mandingoes, Yorubas, the Mossi, Nupe, Borgu, and others.
Everywhere human life was to be seen in its varied forms, the most cheerful and the most gloomy closely mixed together the olive-coloured Arab, the dark Kanuri with his wide nostrils, the small-featured, light, and slender Ba-fellanchi, the broad-faced Mandingo, the stout, large-boned, and masculine Nupe female, the well-proportioned and comely Ba-haushe woman.
According to credible legend, the "Great King" at Byzantium imported glass, tin, silver, bronze, cut stones, and other treasure from the Sudan. Embassies were sent and states like Nupe recognized the suzerainty of the Byzantine emperor.
The chief difficulties since that date have arisen from French aggressions on the west, which will be noticed presently. In 1897 the Royal Niger Company overthrew the power of the turbulent and slave-raiding Sultan of Nupe, near the Niger, but, as has so often happened, the very success of the company doomed it to absorption by the nation.
The slave trade thus begun by the Portuguese, enlarged by the Dutch, and carried to its culmination by the English centered on the west coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of Mohammedan culture.
Indigenous civilizations arose on the west coast in Yoruba and Benin, and contact of these with the Mediterranean race in the desert, and with Egyptian and Arab from the east, gave rise to centers of Negro culture in the Sudan at Ghana and Melle and in Songhay, Nupe, the Hausa states, and Bornu.
"It is absolutely necessary that we should hold her captive, or, like the deposed queen of the Nupé, she may stir up strife and form a plot to reascend the stool." "To thee, Kona, I look to guard me from mine enemies," my friend exclaimed.
It was strongly organized, with feudatory allied states, and carried on an extensive commerce by means of the traders on the coast. The kings were converted to nominal Christianity by the Portuguese. There are indications of trade between Nupe in West Africa and Sofala on the east coast, and certainly trade between Asia and East Africa is earlier than the beginning of the Christian era.
This social and industrial state of the Yorubas formerly spread and wielded great influence. We find Yoruba reaching out and subduing states like Nupe toward the northward. But the industrial democracy and city autonomy of Yoruba lent itself indifferently to conquest, and the state fell eventually a victim to the fanatical Fula Mohammedans and was made a part of the modern sultanate of Gando.
The people of Nupe especially were filled with pride when the Byzantine people learned certain kinds of work in bronze and glass from them, and this intercourse was only interrupted by the Mohammedan conquest. To this ancient culture, modified somewhat by Byzantine and Christian influences, came Islam.
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