226 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY Whether this accidental discovery of unknown monuments may yet be repeated farther west, and links be established in a continuous chain of ancient civilisation reaching from the Red Sea to the country west of Chad, or whether the civilisations of the western and the eastern ends of the fertile belt of the Soudan were in fact separated from one another by a sea of which the waters of Chad are but the disappearing trace, is, however, a question which, interesting as it is, becomes, in the light of the proved connection by the northern road, a question rather of detail than of principle.

If there was no connection by the south, there certainly was connection by the north, by means of which the early inhabitants of the Haussa States may have been brought under the same influences of civilisation which spread from Ethiopia to ancient Egypt and thence to Europe and Northern Africa.