traveller, "the Mohammedan religion has made, and continues to make, considerable progress." "The yearning of the native African," says Professor Crummell, "for a higher religion, is illustrated by the singular fact that Mohammedanism is rapidly and peaceably spreading all through the tribes of Western Africa, even to the Christian settlements of Liberia."
From Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is scarcely an important town on the seaboard where there is not at least one mosque, and active representatives of Islam often side by side with the Christian teachers. And as soon as a pagan, however obscure or degraded, embraces the Moslem faith, he is at once admitted as an equal to their society. Slavery and slave-trade are laudable institutions, provided the slaves are Kafirs. The slave who embraces Islamism is free, and no office is closed against him on account of servile blood.[1]
Passing over into the southern part, we find the people in a state of civilization, and yet superstitious, as indeed are the natives everywhere.
The town of Noble is a settlement of modern times, sheltering forty thousand souls, close to an ancient city of the same name, the Rome of aboriginal South Africa. The religious ceremonies performed there are of the most puerile character, and would be thought by most equally idolatrous with those formerly held in the same spot by the descendants of Mumbo Jumbo.
On Easter Monday is celebrated the Festa del
- ↑ Prof. Blyden, in "Methodist Quarterly Review," June, 1871.
