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AFRICA.

THE past year has been remarkable as a year of progress. In many cases the results have not appeared, but great movements are ripening towards a catastrophe under the genial influence of an educated public opinion. Among the important achievements of the period are the plans maturing for a more complete conquest of the occan, and the subjugation, for the use of man, of the three elements-fire, air, and water. We have just received accounts of the assembling of the forces, as we may term them, which are to hew down the great barrier between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. The Isthmus of Panama will soon be traversed by the railway train, and the Nicaragua canal will afterwards unite those mighty waters. The first sod of railway in India has been turned. A link of steam will also be laid down between England and her flourishing settlements in Australia. Active preparations are making for opening a channel for commerce from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, and as a guarantee that these are not ideal projects, never to be realized, a great triumph has been actually accomplished, and arrangements made for a line of steamers between England and the Cape of Good Hope.

Great Britain and Africa will, within a few weeks, have approached within thirty days' journey of cach other. A new bond has sprung up between them; a new era has opened on the dark old continent, for the more attention is bestowed on it, the sooner will the day of its deliverance arrive. The country has reason to be well satisfied with this plan. It is excellently conceived, and we confidently trust to its being well carried out. A new impulse will thus be given to civilization on the African coast; commerce will be extended; mutual relations strengthened; our colonics advanced, and the general sum of human prosperity increased. For whatever tends to bring countrics, as well as individuals together, serves to subdue their barbarism, and to develop in the one instance the riches, as in the other the qualities, of which cach may happen to be possessed. Therefore, as we look upon the establishment of steam communication with the Cape as the commencement of a new era in the history of Africa, we intend to devote a few pages to a subject which will henceforward possess an increasing interest.

exhausted and useless, will one day be engulfed among the united waters of the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans, while the ever-growing islands of the Oriental Archipelago and the Pacific will gradually increase until the whole tract appears above water and forms a more fortunate and mightier continent, sitting above the line, in place of the sunken deserts of Sahara and Libya.

"But where is Africa? I seek in vain

Her swarthy shore along its native main !
Methinks I hear a wailing in the wild
As of a mother weeping o'er her child!
Her fate lics buried in mysterious night
Where the wide waters of the globe unite,
And where the moonlight paved her hills with
smiles,

The billows moan amid a hundred isles!"1

This theory, however originated by grave geogra phers and favoured by the fancy of the poet, should by no means place Africa beyond the sympathies of philanthropy. Whatever she may be now, she once enriched the world, and will again be received into the communion of civilization. Her situation is admirable for intercourse with all other countries. With the map of the world spread before us, we find Africa in the centre of the three other quarters. The Mediterranean, which bounds its northern coast for almost a thousand miles from east to west, separates it from Europe by a distance at one place of not more than ten, seldom a hundred, and never three hundred miles. The Red Sea, dividing it on the north-east from Asia, is one of the narrowest on the globe. By one slight neck of land, soon to be pierced by a canal, it is connected with Arabia and Palestine. To the west it is throughout its extent opposite America, while on the east, the richest shores in India may be reached within thirty days. England will shortly be within a month's voyage. What the north-west passage would give to Great Britain, Africa possesses as commanding the approaches from Europe to the "exhaustless east." Her mighty coast-line of fifteen thousand miles embraces an area of fourteen millions, extending from north to south 1,302 miles, and from east to west 4,127. Thus it stretches through the whole of the torrid zone, and includes within its borders 11° lat. of the southern, and 14° of the northern temperate zones, enjoying some of the finest climates and most productive soils on the face of the earth. 2

When commerce flourished in its vigorous infancy Third in size among the great divisions of the globe, at Tyre, ships sailed from that opulent city in search Africa has long been among them the least civilized, of the rich products of Africa. When Judæa was a and least useful to the rest of the world. Regions wealthy kingdom, Solomon sent vessels to range the discovered since this vast continent had lost in anti-shores of Tarshish, once supposed to indicate a single quity the account of its first intercourse with Europe, have risen to the first rank among civilized states. While their shores are covered with cities, their lands populous, and their ports crowded with commerce, hers are chiefly ruled by savage native kings or still more savage conquerors; her once fertile tracts are descrts, and many of her harbours receive and dismiss fleets laden ouly with slaves. It is as though a curse rested on the soil. Some geographers maintain that Africa,

VOL. XIII.

province, but now admitted to have been applied to the whole continent. The gold of Ophir, believed by some to have been brought from the Malayan Peninsula, was collected on the castern coast. Thus the most famous cities of ancient times opened the intercourse with Africa, which the Phoenicians, the mariners of Carthage, and the merchants of Greece

(1) T. K. Hervey.

(2) This is especially true of the Valley of the Nile.

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continued to carry on, until the splendid republic declined, and left to Rome a task which she almost neglected to perform. We learn that the traders of Athens procured from the great Peninsula gold in dust and ingots, blocks of ebony and ivory from a country where it was so plentiful that the cattle-sheds were enclosed with palings made of elephants' teeth. Black slaves, linen, medicinal roots, perfumes and aromatic spices, dyes rivalling in depth and brilliance the purple of Tyre, kermes, dried locusts as materia medica, with alum, salt, cinnabar, and many precious stones, were brought to the marts of Greece. Ostrich feathers, to adorn the crests of helmets; slabs of citron-wood, for the making of tables; beautiful marbles, many gums, oils, roots, and other commodities, too various to enumerate, ministered to the wants and luxuries of wealthy Greece. Egypt was her granary; but that superb kingdom, with all others on the shores of Africa, was swallowed up by the enormous conquests of the Romans, and a vast blank in history succeeds this memorable period.

But after this happy discovery immense blanks remained on the map, and the enterprise of Europe was for ages engaged in tracing the course of rivers, laying down the windings of the coast, and exploring the kingdoms of Africa. America, indeed, possessing the powerful attraction of novelty, diverted the attention of the world, and long intervals elapsed between the fits of English enthusiasm. Many travellers, nevertheless, set out on journeys; some to explore the course of the Niger, others to traverse the desert, others to examine the resources of the coast. Many fell victims to disease, and were buried on the banks of the Black River; others were killed by the natives, and left their bones to bleach on the caravan-routes across the wastes of Sahara. The names of Jobson, Stibbs, Bruce, Ledyard, Lucas, Ben Ali, Houghton, Mungo Park, Hornemann, Nichols, Browne, Roentzen, Burckhardt, Tuckie, Peddie, Campbell, Stokoe, Gray, Ritchie, Lyon, Denham, Clapperton, Oudney, and the faithful Lander, are all those of famous wanderers through the African conre-tinent. Park, the solitary pedestrian, discovered the mysterious Niger, flowing through countries hitherto unknown, with a stream as broad as the Thames at Westminster; and Clapperton and Oudney, two unpretending young men, committing themselves in a frail canoe to its waters, were borne by a strange current through 600 miles of a savage region to its long-sought termination in the sea.

When the democratic institutions of the ancient publics degenerated into aristocracies, and, ultimately, were degraded by the change to imperialism, civilization appears to have sunk to sleep, and not to have awakened until the revival of letters in the fourteenth century. Commerce, under the same baneful influence, became inactive, and, although still carried on, displayed little of the lustre which once rendered Carthage, though an African state, the dangerous competitor of Rome.

The conquests of the Mohammedans, indeed, spread over Africa, and enterprises were undertaken by the adventurous to penetrate its mysterious depths, and lay down the outline of its enormous coasts; but the continent still stretched as though interminably to the south, and was lost in mystery. When printing was discovered, and men were opening their minds to knowledge, the Portuguese commenced the grand career of discovery, which adorned the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with an unfading lustre. The Cape, named "Non," from the belief that it forbad the sailor's advance, was at length passed. The mariners pursued the shore, still lengthening as they sailed, and Cape Bojador, 160 miles southward, was reached. Its aspect appeared to warn them from further adventure, but in 1433 the formidable promontory was doubled, and the navigators entered the tropics. Nearly forty years elapsed before they crossed the Line, and sailed into those seas supposed by the ancients to boil under the fervour of the sun. In less than thirteen years from that date they advanced fifteen hundred miles beyond the Equator. The Cape was discovered, hopes were excited of finding a passage to India, and at length, in 1497, Vasco di Gama reached the gates of the Last, and steered through the stormy ocean that breaks round the Cape of Good Hope :

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"O'er India's sea, wing'd on by balmy gales,
That whisper'd peace, soft swell'd the steady sails."1

(1) Camoëns.

Clapperton was told by Bello, Sultan of the Fulahs, Filatahs, or Fellahs, that in the eastern part of Sudan dwelt a race so attached to the sound of the letter F that the names of ninety-nine mountains began with it. Three of them were Fazuglu, Faffuklu, and Fauduflu. Upon this, two recent travellers' indulged in the following extravagant but pleasant conceit :

It is funny that these Fellahs are so fond of the letter F, but unfortunate for folly that they could not furnish fuller facts for the following frivolous flight of fancy:

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"Fish, flesh, and fowl, and fruitful fields,
For fortune's favourite, friend or foe,
Fazuglu finds, Fandufflu yields.
Where Furzi, Furdo, Faff 'klu flow,
They fecundate to furnish food
For far-famed Fellahs, first who fought
For fierce Dan Fodio; 2 free of thought,
Or fill full fast from foaming flood,
Foul feral Fitre fever fraught."

Gradually settlements were formed on the Western, Eastern and Southern coasts, where the English, Dutch, and Portuguese established themselves to carry on traffic with the native princes. They found the country to be inhabited by seven races of people; the Hottentots at the Cape, the Kaflirs their neighbours, the Abyssinians in their hilly country on the east, the Numidians, a race apparently created to be conquered, the Nubians inhabiting all the regions spread round Abyssinia, the Egyptians on the banks of the Nile, and the Negro family scattered over the vast (1) Thompson and Allen.

(2) An allusion to an event in native history.

tracts stretching from the southern confines of the Great Desert, as far as 20° of south latitude. In || what numbers, however, these nations exist no one knows. That our ignorance is complete, may be shown by the fact, that one estimate allows sixty, another seventy, another more than a hundred millions as the population of the continent.

What the Europeans, however, looked for at first was ivory, with precious metals, and spices; they found elephants' teeth, gold, and other valuable commodities, which rendered the possession of an African colony important to a trading nation.

Into the details of vicissitudes suffered by Africa and the pretenders to the possession of her soil, our limits will not allow us to enter. They belong to general history, and the reader may look far to find them completely described in any single work. We want a history of Africa, as much as one of Insular Asia. At present, however, we may offer a sketch of the recent progress of discovery, and follow it by a view of the present aspect of the slave trade, the state of commerce, and the condition of the English settlements at the Cape and on the Coast.

Among the great problems which have perplexed geographers, the sources of the Nile and the Niger have been among the most interesting. The great river of Egypt is the traveller's Mecca. For the empire that flourished on its banks, for the beautiful relics of art, and the magnificent works of industry, bequeathed to us by the pride of that fallen power, it possesses a perpetual claim on our attention, but also for the mystery which still hides the remote springs that pour their tribute into its channel. The discovery of the source of the Blue River, by Bruce, was once accepted as the solution of the question; but the Western branch, or White Nile, which is an infinitely larger stream, still remains unexplored to its birthplace among the interior mountains. Traveller after traveller has complacently announced himself as the great discoverer, whose star had outshone that of Bruce, but further examination has, in all cases, shown that the main stream had not been traced to its fountain head. From the days of Alexander to our own time the inquiry has been carried on, and it is still incomplete. The last attempt was set on foot by Mohammed Ali, the late able and ambitious, but ferocious Viceroy of Egypt. The result of the expedition may be briefly described, to show that the honour is even now reserved for some future explorer, to connect his name for ever with the source of the Bahr el Abiad.

Ferdinand Werne commenced his journey in 1840. He was sent, not to find the source of the Nile, but to aid science in the interest of avarice, by opening an easy route to the famous gold countries beyond the Mountains of the Moon. From the junction of the Blue with the White Nile, he sailed with his company in large river vessels. The stream was broad and beautiful, bordered by an undulating woody country, and spangled with the brilliant white lotus. Vast tribes of barbarians inhabit the borders,

dwelling in villages which follow each other in rapid succession along the course of the river. At times the stream contracted and rolled rapidly along; at times it expanded in vast lakes, and was lost to sight on either side, while in some places its broad surface, glittering with lotuses and studded with green islands, was bounded by low forests or broken lines of hills.

At sunset the travellers enjoyed a prospect almost equal in beauty to any presented among the islands of the East. The wide stream, glowing like liquid gold, rippled softly along, darkening as the sun hid itself behind the Araskol, and the slender sickle of the moon shone clearer in the west, with Venus in an unclouded sky. The islands stood out, with their thick groves, from the tranquil water; and, on the other side, the tapering peaks of the mountains grew dim in the deep blue, behind a line of dusky woods. On the shore the crews crowded round the bright fires; some cooking, some singing songs in chorus; others dancing or leaping in the glare of the flames. Long streaks of light fell from the rising blazes over the river, and the vessels lay under the shadow of the banks, the only sign of civilization in the whole savage Gradually the light thickens, the deep flush of sunset disappears, the white rays of the moon silver the hills, woods, and the stream; the revel ceases, and the landscape becomes as still as though its silence had never been disturbed since the day of creation.

scene.

Through such scenes the explorers proceeded for hundreds of miles, passing out of one kingdom into another, leaving the inhabited for the uninhabited, the woody for the naked, the level for the hilly country. From the "land swarming with gnats" they passed into the "Region of Lakes," peopled by a gigantic race of men. After many adventures, which we cannot now pause to describe, they reached the farfamed Mountains of the Moon, long supposed to lie beyond the sources of the Nile. Beyond these a bar of rocks obstructed their progress, and they were compelled to return. Here, however, they were beyond the Mountains of the Moon. The last map of Africa, constructed on a magnificent scale, "according to the latest authorities," traced the Nile within seven degrees of the Equator. Twenty years before it was carried within twelve degrees,' so that although Werne failed in his great object, he actually visited the Mountains of the Moon, and has reported to Europe the important fact that within four degrees, or about two hundred and eighty miles, of the central line which encompasses the globe, the mighty and mysterious stream still flowed with majestic breadth, and was navigable for vessels of considerable size and burden.

Next to the Nile, the Niger is the most interesting of African steams. Like the great river of Egypt, it is influenced by a periodical rise, which, indeed, visits all the rivers of Abyssinia, the Blue and the White

(1). We reserve a detailed notice of the various attempts made

to discover these mysterious fountains, with the numerous theories now basking in the sun of Egypt, on the bosom of Old Nile. concerning them, for a separate paper, to be written by a gentleman

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