Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/49

Rh negro, he says, "When visited in 1879 by Dr. Buchver, this potentate, [the muata yanvo of Ulunda] to impress his guest with his power, caused one of his subjects to assume the part of a chief just arrived from a remote province of the empire. The sham cortege of soldiers and women advanced to the throne all thickly plastered with mud from head to foot, and the "chief" approaching on all fours deliberately rolled himself in the sand at his majesty's feet.

The administration of justice is regulated not by any sense of right or wrong, but by the caprice of the king, who is himself often in the power of the navumbala, or witch-detector. Beyond what has been acquired from without, of letters there is absolutely no knowledge, unless an exception be made in favour of the invention or adaptation of a rude syllabic system some years ago by a native of the Vei tribe. Hence literature is purely oral, and limited to a few tribal legends, some folklore, proverbs, and songs of the simplest kind. The arts also are exclusively of an industrial character, and restricted mainly to coarse weaving, pottery, and the smelting and working of metals (chiefly copper and iron), agriculture, and grazing. Architecture has no existence, nor are there any monumental ruins or stone structures of any sort in the whole of Negroland except those erected in Soudan under Hamitic and Semitic influences. No full-blooded negro has ever been distinguished as a man of science, a poet, or an artist, and the fundamental equality claimed for him by ignorant philanthropists is belied by the whole history of the race throughout the historic period." Mark you,