These Demonstrate That, Although The Geologist Finds Here None
Of Those Characters Of Lithological Structure And Curiously Diversified
Organic Remains
Which enable him to fix the epochs of succession in the
crust of the earth in other quarters of the
Globe, the interior of South
Africa is unquestionably a grand type of a region which has preserved
its ancient terrestrial conditions during a very long period, unaffected
by any changes except those which are dependent on atmospheric and
meteoric influences.
"If, then, the lower animals and plants of this vast country have gone
on unchanged for a very long period, may we infer that its human
inhabitants are of like antiquity? If so, the Negro may claim as old a
lineage as the Caucasian or Mongolian races. In the absence of any
decisive fact, I forbear, at present, to speculate on this point; but
as, amid the fossil specimens procured by Livingstone and Kirk, there
are fragments of pottery made by human hands, we must wait until some
zealous explorer of Southern Africa shall distinctly bring forward
proofs that the manufactured articles are of the same age as the fossil
bones. In other words, we still require from Africa the same proofs of
the existence of links which bind together the sciences of Geology and
Archaeology which have recently been developed in Europe. Now, if the
unquestioned works of man should be found to be coeval with the remains
of fossilized existing animals in Southern Africa, the travelled
geographer, who has convinced himself of the ancient condition of its
surface, must admit, however unwillingly, that although the black man is
of such very remote antiquity, he has been very stationary in
civilization and in attaining the arts of life, if he be compared with
the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Red Indian of America, or even with
the aborigines of Polynesia." ("The most remarkable proof of the
inferiority of the Negro, when compared with the Asiatic, is, that
whilst the latter has domesticated the elephant for ages, and rendered
it highly useful to man, the Negro has only slaughtered the animal to
obtain food or ivory.")
CHAPTER XIX.
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