250 years later the average tonnage of the vessels of Spain was 300 tons
and that of the English much less. The largest ship which Queen Elizabeth
had in her navy, the _Great Mary_, had a capacity of a thousand tons; but
it was considered an exception and the marvel of the age.

Another thing that is not generally known is the importance to which some
of these Negro kingdoms of the Western Sudan attained during the middle
ages and the first centuries of the modern era. In size and permanency
they compared favorably with the most advanced nations of Europe. The
kingdom of Melle of which the historian, Iben Khaldun, wrote, had an area
of over 1,000 miles in extent and existed for 250 years. It was the first
of the kingdoms of the Western Sudan to be received on equal terms with
the contemporary white nations. The greatest of all the Sudan states was
the kingdom of Songhay which, in its golden age, had an area almost equal
to that of the United States and existed from about 750 A.D. to 1591.
There is a record of the kings of Songhay in regular succession for almost
900 years. The length of the life of the Songhay empire coincides almost
exactly with the life of Rome from its foundation as a republic to its
downfall as an empire.

The greatest evidences of the high state of civilization which the Sudan
had in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the attention that was
paid to education and the unusual amount of learning that existed there.
The university of Sankore at Timbuctu was a very active center of learning.
It was in correspondence with the universities of North Africa and Egypt.
It was in touch with the universities of Spain. In the sixteenth century
Timbuctu had a large learned class living at ease and busily occupied with
the elucidation of intellectual and religious problems. The town swarmed
with students. Law, literature, grammar, theology and the natural sciences
were studied. The city of Melle had a regular school of science. One