oversights and errors are all the more abundantly met with the
more distant are the epochs or the events, since many genera-
tions are necessary for the transmission of the story.
Nevertheless, as there are generally several griots concurrently
charged with the same task, it is possible, by consulting them in
turn, to check up statements and arrive, if not at certitude, at
least at a satisfactory approximation.
It is also natural, especially for very old events, that legend,
which strikes the imagination more profoundly, should be better
remembered than history and that in the end it should predom-
inate in the recitals of the traditionalists. Most of the time,
however, it is not extremely difficult to separate out the truth
which is dissimulated under the symbols of a fantastic
appearance. Thus, when the traditions reported by the griots
speak of showers of gold that the sacred serpent of Kumbi
caused to fall over Wagadu, we immediately think of the pros-
perity that the exploitation of the gold mines of the Upper
Senegal and the Faleme brought to the empire of Ghana before
the introduction of Islam, a prosperity described by Arab writers
of the Middle Ages. The cessation of these showers of gold and
even of ordinary rain, together with the misery and famine that
resulted there from the dispersion of the inhabitants and the
breaking up of the kingdom, attributed by the legend to the
killing of the sacred serpent, are easily interpreted by the ruin
that the Almoravide conquest brought to the country in falling
upon paganism and by the progressive drying up of the sub-
Saharan regions.
In any case, it is great good fortune for science that, in the
countries generally devoid of the aid of writing, there exists such
an institution, thanks to which the important facts of history, the
origins of tribes, the details of customs, and beliefs have been
preserved in the memory of man. And it is curious to note that
peoples reputed to be ignorant and barbarous have found a
means to take the place of libraries by supporting amongst
themselves successive generations of living books, each one of
which adds to the heritage it has received from the precedent.
These so-called savages have, at their call, historical
compendiums and codes just as we have. Only it is in the cerebral
convolutions of their traditionalist griots, and not on paper, that
their annals and their laws are imprinted.
Bansonyisnake (Nalu).
Guinea.
Wood, 250 cm.
Musée du quai Branly, Paris.