THE YORUBA-SPEAKING PEOPLES.

Abeokuta, isolated masses of granite provide evidence of great erosion denudation: the process of wearing away the earth's surface by water, wind, or ice. In fact, the whole western coast of Africa between the Isles de Los, seventy miles north of Sierra Leone, and Lagos—and probably beyond those limits—shows traces of enormous erosion. The table-topped Kofiu Mountain, which rises sheer from the plain north of the Melikuri River to a height of 2,000 feet, is the sole remnant of a vast cap of sandstone that undoubtedly at one time covered the whole of that part of the country. The Krobo Mountain, an isolated and precipitous mass 800 feet high situated in the Krobo plain on the Gold Coast, together with the table-topped mountains with vertical cliffs in the Ataklu district north of the Quittah (Keta) lagoon, will probably prove to be other remnants of the same sandstone formation when geologically examined.

See “Ewe-speaking Peoples,” page 285.

Regarding the early history of the Yoruba-speaking peoples, nothing is known except what can be gleaned from Dalzel’s “History of Dahomey” (1793). From this, it appears that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, all the different tribes were united and ruled by a king who resided at Old Oyo, sometimes called Katunga. The kingdom of Yoruba also seems to have been more powerful than the other two great African kingdoms: Dahomey and Ashanti. Between 1724 and 1725, the King of Yoruba took up the cause of the King of Ardra, whose kingdom had been overthrown by Dahomey, and sent a large army, consisting chiefly of cavalry, to invade Dahomey. By a stratagem See “Ewe-speaking Peoples,” page 294., the Yorubas were routed, and the king