ii6 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY with any detail upon these early conquests. They are interesting merely as indications of the approaching disappearance of the supremacy of Ghana. While Timbuctoo, which was destined to represent the great centre of Mohammedanism in the Soudan, was growing, Ghana, the great centre of paganism, was passing away. It had maintained itself from a period long antecedent to the Hegira. After an existence of perhaps a thousand years, the term of its decadence had arrived, and toward the beginning of the thirteenth century of our era it had reached a condition in which, being at once rich and weak, it could scarcely fail to become the prey of stronger neighbours. By the end of that century it had become subject to its Mohammedan neighbour Melle.

So silently, and without dramatic rites, the gods of paganism disappear from the front rank of the history of the Soudan. No dome was built for them in Ghana. No ditch was dug. No sacred grove was planted. They simply fell back into the dark and barbarous country to the south — the land of the Lem-Lem, which Arab historians dismiss contemptuously as the land of idolaters '*who eat men." The memory of these pagan gods lingered long amongst the lower orders of the northern states ; but whatever their worship had brought with it of enlightenment from the antiquity of eastern civilisation was finally extinguished in the barbaric caricature which is the memorial preserved of them to the present day by certain tribes of the southern coast.