CHAPTER XVIII - AFRICAN PROPERTY

Summary

Wherein some attempt is made to set down the divers kinds of property that exist among the people of the true Negro race in Western Africa, and the law whereby it is governed.

In speaking on the subject of African property and the laws which guard it in its native state, I must, in the space at my disposal here, confine myself to speaking of these things as they are in one division of the many different races of human beings that inhabit that vast continent of Africa; and, in order to present the affair more clearly, I must take them as they exist in their most highly developed state, namely, among the people of the true Negro stock, for it is among these people that pure African culture has reached so far its fullest state of development.

The distribution zone of this true Negrostock cannot yet be fixed with any approach to accuracy, but we know that the seaboard of the regions inhabited by the true Negro is that vast stretch of the African West Coast from a point south of the Gambia River to a point just north of Cameroon River, in the region of the Rio del Rey. We can safely say, within this region you will find the true Negro, but we cannot safely say how far inland, or how far down south of the Rio del Rey we shall find him.