V GUINEA AND CONGO


One of the great cities of the Sudan was Jenne. The chronicle says "that
its markets are held every day of the week and its populations are very
enormous. Its seven thousand villages are so near to one another that the
chief of Jenne has no need of messengers. If he wishes to send a note to
Lake Dibo, for instance, it is cried from the gate of the town and
repeated from village to village, by which means it reaches its
destination almost instantly."[23]



From the name of this city we get the modern name Guinea, which is used
to-day to designate the country contiguous to the great gulf of that
name--a territory often referred to in general as West Africa. Here,
reaching from the mouth of the Gambia to the mouth of the Niger, is a
coast of six hundred miles, where a marvelous drama of world history has
been enacted. The coast and its hinterland comprehends many well-known
names. 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.

Recent investigation makes it certain that an ancient civilization existed
on this coast which may have gone back as far as three thousand years
before Christ. Frobenius, perhaps fancifully, identified this African
coast with the Atlantis of the Greeks and as part of that great western