collapse. There is yet little productive industry to take the place of the profits of the slave-trade.

Passing from Upper Guinea, of which Ashantee and Dahomey are the principal territories, we come next to Lower or South Guinea, which extends from the Bight of Biafra to the commencement of Southern Africa, and includes the provinces or districts of Loango, Congo, Angola, and Benguela. The whole of this tract of coast presents the aspect of a country degraded and deteriorated by intercourse with Europeans, to a condition worse than its original negro barbarism. Here, more than three centuries ago, the Portuguese established themselves partly as missionaries of Christianity, and partly as traders in slaves; and while their efforts in the former capacity, directed as they are by the most absurd and wretched bigotry, produced almost no beneficial effect, the curse of the slavetraffic which they imported has adhered to the country with a tenacity which all the rigours of modern philanthropy have hardly yet overcome.

SOUTHERN AFRICA.

Occupied with their lucrative commerce on the fertile coasts of Western Africa, the Portuguese scarcely bestowed a thought on the southern extremity of the continent, the aspect of which was less promising; and accordingly, for a century and a half after the famous voyage of Vasco da Gama, the district round the Cape of Good Hope remained a blank waste to Europeans. The prudent and enterprising Dutch, however, having embarked in the East India trade, soon discovered the importance of the Cape as a commercial station, and in the year 1650 they founded Cape Town, the capital of Cape Colony, the most flourishing of all the European settlements in Africa. Encroaching, without the least scruple, on the territories of the natives, the Dutch extended their possessions so as to include an area of upwards of 120,000 square miles, some spots of which were cultivated and planted with vines, or laid out in corn-fields, but the greater part was converted into immense grazing farms. Under the Dutch the natives suffered dreadfully, numbers of them being reduced to bondage, and others driven into the interior to find subsistence as they best could. In 1795, the colony was taken by the English; it was again restored to the Dutch in 1802; a second time, however, it was taken by the English, to whom it was finally ceded in the year 1815, and is now, accordingly, an English possession. A portion of the east coast has been formed into the separate colony of Natal; and north-west from this, discontented descendants of the original Dutch settlers have formed two independent settlements, called the Orange River Free State, and the Transvaal Republic. Both before and after the cession of Cape Colony to the British, various travellers have undertaken journeys

among the tribes inhabiting this extremity of Africa; and no accounts are more full and interesting than those of the various missionaries. who, since the beginning of the present century, have employed themselves in the arduous task of carrying the doctrines of Christianity into the heart of the native tribes. The native races of Southern Africa are two in number-the Hottentots and the Kaffirs; the former, so far as not extirpated, living within the colony and on its confines towards the west coast; the other occupying tracts on the east and north.

Of the Hottentots of the colony and its vicinity, it is said that they have become noted and almost proverbial for presenting man in his lowest estate, and under the closest alliance with the inferior orders of creation. The intercourse of the Hottentots with the Dutch settlers both degraded them and diminished their numbers. Many of the tribes parted with their flocks and herds to procure spirits, and eventually they became the absolute slaves of the Boers. From this condition they have been delivered by the more humane policy of the British government; and as free labourers they make excellent herdsmen. The Hottentots are more akin to the Mongolians, or even the Esquimaux, than to the negroes, having broad foreheads, high cheekbones, oblique eyes, and a dirty olive-coloured complexion. The most degraded tribe of the Hottentots are the Bosjesmen or Bushmen. There is but little notion of religion among the Hottentots in their wild state; but they have proved very susceptible of religious instruction by Christian missionaries.

The name Kaffir (from an Arabic word signifying 'unbeliever') is generally understood to apply to the tribes inhabiting the coast country on the east side of South-east Africa; but ethnologists now extend it so as to include all the tribes living in the region south of 18° of south latitude, and reaching to Cape Colony. They are more or less akin, and form one family, divided into three groups-(1.) the east-coast Kaffirs, speaking the Zulu language; (2.) those of the central region, speaking the Sichuana language, and known by the general name of Betjuans; and (3.) the west-coast tribes, speaking the Ovampo language.

In physical conformation, the Kaffirs are described as modified negroes. They are tall, well made, and generally handsome, of a dark-brown or bronze colour, and hair in short woolly tufts. As we proceed to the north, they gradually become more assimilated to the negro type, until at last the two races seem to blend together. They are brave, and, in times of peace, kind and hospitable to strangers, affectionate husbands and fathers; and their minds have a peculiarly acute and logical turn, which, in discussions with Europeans, often give them the best of the argument. They are an honest people, except, perhaps, in the article cattle. Although their idea of God appears very indistinct, and their feelings of veneration but small, yet they are very superstitious, and dread the influence of

wizards and sorcerers. The general rule of the chiefs is patriarchal. Polygamy is allowed, and wives are generally purchased for cattle. The chief has absolute power over the property of his whole tribe, although he seldom exercises it. They practise, in common with all other African nations, circumcision and many peculiar rites of purification, many of them analogous to those prescribed in the Mosaic law; but these rites appear, both in Africa and Asia, to have been generally practised at an earlier period even than the Jews adopted them. The number of the Kaffir races has been estimated at three millions, scattered over an area of about a million square miles.

EASTERN AFRICA.

With the exception of the countries bordering on the Red Sea-Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia-which cannot be included in so general a survey as the present, the eastern coast of Africa is the least-known portion of the whole circuit of the continent. The tract of country extending from the northern extremity of Kaffirland to Cape Guardafui, and including the territories of Sofala, Mozambique, Zanguebar or Zanzibar, and Ajan, was early visited by the Portuguese in their voyages to India; and in the course of the sixteenth century, various settlements were planted in it by them, similar to those which they planted along the Guinea Coast. The most conspicuous difference was, that here the ruling race were not pure negroes, but men of Arabic descent, and vehement Mohammedans. It was from these that the Portuguese wrested the immense line of coast-territory which they once held in this part of Africa, and of which they made Mozambique the capital. On the ruin of the Portuguese power in India, their settlements in Eastern Africa declined. Ajan is now held by the Somali, a people of Arabic descent, and is known as Somaliland. It was explored in 1854 by Burton and Speke. Zanzibar, extending from 2° N. lat. to Cape Delgado, in 10° 42′ S. lat., was taken possession of in 1784 by the Imaum of Muscat, and in 1854 became a separate kingdom under one of his sons. The Portuguese possessions are now confined to the tract from Cape Delgado to Delagoa Bay. Even here they have only a few stations, and their authority in the country is inconsiderable. Traffic in slaves is still covertly carried on, though not to the same extent as at one time. The country is rich in a variety of products; but the climate is unhealthy, and the people are in a very degraded condition.

CENTRAL AFRICA.

Under the general name of Central Africa may be included the whole of the interior of the continent south of the Great Desert. Our narrative of the gradual exploration of this vast region will

be better understood if we begin with a sketch of its general features as they are now known. The whole African continent is, with few interruptions, bordered by a mountainous tract of greater or less elevation. The chief breaks in this chain are from the Delta of the Nile to Tunis, and, again, from Morocco to Senegambia; but between these there is the long and lofty Atlas range, rising to the height of 11,400 feet. The border highlands begin again in Senegambia, and are continued in the Kong and King William Mountains, lying north from the Guinea Coast. The Cameroons, west from the Bight of Biafra, are 13,000 feet high; and the chain continues along the coast of Lower Guinea and Damaraland to Cape Colony, where, in the Sneeuwberg and Drakenberg, it reaches 9000 feet. In Mozambique it is known as the Lupata range; and in Zanzibar, the peaks of Kilima Njaro and Kenia are estimated to be 20,000 feet high. The mountains of Abyssinia rise to nearly 16,000 feet; and a series of rocky hills continues the range along the Red Sea to the Delta of the Nile.

Between the coast and the border-range runs a belt of lowlands, varying from 50 to 300 miles in breadth, and usually rising in successive stages towards the mountains. In Cape Colony, these terraces are called carroos; the Great Carroo is a barren, waterless plain, 200 miles long, and 50 broad. In Algeria, the coast lowland constitutes the 'Tell.'

The triangular portion of the continent, south of Cape Guardafui and the Gulf of Guinea, presents, in the interior, an elevated plateau or table-land, to which the border range gives a trough-like aspect. The mountains form, as it were, a crest on the edge of this table-land before it begins to slope to the coast. Abyssinia is the eastern prolongation of this great plateau with its elevated crest. The limits of the central parts of the plateau towards the north are not yet determined, although it seems to extend at least 3° or 4° north of the equator. Its north-eastern portion constitutes the remarkable Lake Region, in which lie the sources of the Nile, and perhaps of the Congo. The general elevation of the plateau is 3500 feet; but it is by no means a plain. On the whole, it slopes from the east towards the west; and it is hollowed out in the wide valleys and depressions that contain its great rivers and lakes. It is further diversified by numerous undulations and hilly and mountainous tracts. Until recently, the greater part of this vast tract was marked as unexplored territory, and was conceived to be a riverless, sandy, uninhabited waste. is now known to be very much the reverse. It is, upon the whole, well watered. The equatorial zone is characterised by dense forests and a luxuriant growth of vegetation generally. South of the forest zone is a belt of less wooded country, merging gradually into open, cultivated, or pasture lands. The population is abundant—in many places even dense. One tract, indeed, 600 miles long by 350 broad, lying north of Cape Colony, is called the Kalihari Desert; it is

It

sandy, and destitute of running streams, and almost of springs; but it is mostly covered with trees, shrubs, and other vegetation affording subsistence to vast numbers of the large game for which South Africa is famous.

But the exploration of Central Africa did not begin with this southern plateau, but with the region lying between it and the Great Desert, called Soudan or Nigritia. From the earliest times, this part of Africa attracted attention, as being the country through which the famous Niger flowed, on whose banks the great city of Timbuktu, of the wealth of which vague accounts had reached the shores of the Mediterranean, was reputed to be situated. To ascertain the course of this river, and to reach this celebrated negro city, were the leading objects of all who engaged in the enterprise of African discovery. In the year 1618, an English company was formed for the purpose of opening up a communication with Timbuktu, and not long afterwards a similar company was formed in France. For a century and a half the two nations continued to compete with each other in the enterprise; the English trying to make their way up the river Gambia, which they imagined to be the outlet of the Niger; the French, on the other hand, persevering along the Senegal. It was clearly ascertained, however, that neither the Senegal nor the Gambia could be identical with the Niger, supposing the traditionary accounts of that river to be true. Three distinct opinions respecting this river began to be entertained. Some said that there was no Niger at all, such as the ancients had described it, but that some river branching off into the Senegal and Gambia was alluded to. Others believed that the ancient accounts of the Niger as a river flowing towards the east were correct, and that it was to be considered one of the upper branches of the Nile. A third party maintained that the supposition of the Niger being identical with the Nile was untenable, considering the immense breadth of the continent, and that the true Niger was some stream rising in the interior of Africa, and flowing into the sea at some point of the western coast farther south than the Senegal and the Gambia. A subsequent modification of this, opinion was, that the Niger did not flow into the sea at all, but terminated in some great marsh or lake in the interior of Africa, resembling the Caspian Sea.

Such was the state of information, or rather of doubt, with respect to the course of the Niger, when, in the year 1788, a number of spirited men of science, including Lord Rawdon, Sir Joseph Banks, the Bishop of Llandaff, Mr Beaufoy, and Mr Stuart, formed themselves into an association for the purpose of prosecuting this and other questions of African geography to an issue. The first travellers whom the society sent out were cut off by death. It was at this juncture that the celebrated Mungo Park presented himself to the society. Born in the county of Selkirk, in Scotland, in the year