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AFRICAN DISCOVERY.

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HE vast continent of Africa, measuring 5000 miles in length, and about 4700 in its greatest breadth, and the of which is calculated at 12,000,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the entire land area of the globe, has presented greater obstacles to human enterprise than any other equal portion of the earth's surface. The peculiar physical condition of Africa has operated as one cause of her isolation from the rest of the world. The other portions of our earth situated under the tropics consist generally either of sea, or of narrow peninsular tracts of land, and clusters of islands blown upon by the sea-breeze. Africa, on the other hand, presents scarcely one gulf or sea-break in its vast outline. A consequence of this compact geographical shape of a continent, the greater part of which is within the torrid zone, is its subjection, throughout its entire extent, to the unmitigated influence of the sun's heat. All that is noxious in climate we are accustomed to associate with Africa. Here stretching out into a boundless desert, where for days the traveller toils amid burning sands under a stifling sky-there covered with dense and swampy jungle, breathing out pestilence, and teeming with all repulsive forms of animal life, the African continent seems to defy the encroachments of European civilisation. And although, probably, our ideas of these African horrors will. be modified by more accurate knowledge, enough seems ascertained to prove that the laying open of interior Africa to the general flood of human influences will be among the last achievements of the exploring spirit of our race.

Notwithstanding the difficulties which lie in the way, Africa

No. 142.

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has at all times been an object of curiosity and interest to the inhabitants of the civilised parts of the earth; and scientific zeal, the desire of extending traffic, and even the mere thirst for adventure, have prompted many expeditions for the purpose of exploring its coasts and making discoveries in its interior. The ancients appear to have acquired much knowledge of Africa, which was afterwards lost, and had to be re-acquired by the moderns for themselves. The African coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were not only familiar to the ancient geographers, but were inhabited by populations which performed a conspicuous part in the general affairs of the world, and ranked high in the scale of civilisation-the Egyptians, Carthaginians, &c. Nor, if we may believe the evidence which exists in favour of the accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by ancient navigators, were the other coasts of the continent—those, namely, which are washed by the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean-unvisited by northern ships. Regarding the interior of Africa, too, the knowledge possessed by the ancients, although very meagre in itself, was nearly as definite as that possessed by their modern descendants, until within a comparatively recent period. As far as the northern borders of the Great Desert, their own personal observation might be said to extend; and respecting the wandering tribes of black and savage people living farther to the south, they had received many vague notices. The Nile being one of the best-known rivers of the ancient world, its origin and course were matters of great interest, and the African geography of the ancients, in general, may be said to consist of speculations respecting this extraordinary river. The first mention made of the other great African river, the Niger, is by Ptolemy, who lived seventy years after Christ. Ptolemy believed that this river discharged itself ultimately into the Nile; others, however, did not admit this conclusion, and acknowledged that the real course of the Niger was a mystery.

Such are some of the more prominent points in the ancient geography of Africa. How wild and inaccurate must have been the notions entertained respecting the shape and total extent of the African continent, may be judged from the fact, that one geographer describes it as an irregular figure of four sides, the south side running nearly parallel to the equator, but considerably to the north of it! Others, again, held forth the fearful picture of Central Africa as a vast burning plain, in which no green thing grew, and into which no living being could penetrate; and this hypothesis of an uninhabitable torrid zone became at length the generally received one.

The invasion of Africa by the Arab races in the seventh century wrought a great change in the condition of the northern half of the continent. Founding powerful states along the Mediterranean coasts, these enterprising Mohammedans, or Moors, as they were called, were able, by means of the camel, to effect

a passage across the Desert which had baffled the ancients, and to hold intercourse with the negroes who lived on its southern border along the banks of the Niger and the shores of Lake Tchad. In some of these negro states the Arabs obtained a preponderance, and with others they carried on an influential and lucrative commerce. The consequence was a mixture of Moorish and negro blood among the inhabitants of the countries of Central Africa bordering on the Great Desert, as well as a general diffusion of certain scraps of the Mohammedan religion among the negro tribes. Hence it is that, in the innermost recesses of interior Africa at the present day, we find the negroes partly professing Paganism, partly Mohammedanism, but all practising ceremonies and superstitions in which we observe the Pagan spirit with a slight Mohammedan tincture.

It was not till the fifteenth century that the career of modern European discovery in Africa commenced. The Portuguese, leading the van of the nations of Europe in that great movement of maritime enterprise which constitutes so signal an epoch in the history of modern society, selected the western coast of Africa as the most promising track along which to prosecute discovery; their intercourse with the Moors having made them aware that gold and other precious commodities were to be procured in that direction. In the year 1433, Cape Bojador was passed by a navigator called Gilianez; and others succeeding him, passed Cape Blanco, and, exploring the entire coast of the Desert, reached at length the fertile shores of Gambia and Guinea. The sudden bending inwards of the coast line at the Gulf of Guinea gave a new direction and a new impulse to the activity of the Portuguese. Having no definite ideas of the breadth of the African continent, they imagined that, by continuing their course eastward along the Gulf, they would arrive at the renowned country of the great Prester John, a fabulous personage, who was believed to reign with golden sway over an immense and rich territory, situated no one could tell exactly where, but which some contended could be no other than Abyssinia. The Portuguese, while prosecuting their discoveries along the African coast, did not neglect means for establishing a commercial intercourse with those parts of the coast which they had already explored. Settlements or factories for the convenience of the trade in gold, ivory, gum, different kinds of timber, and eventually also in slaves, were founded at various points of the coast between Cape Verd and Biafra. Various missionary settlements were likewise founded for the dissemination of the Roman Catholic faith among the natives.

The chimera of Prester John was succeeded by the more rational hope of effecting a passage to India by the way of Southern Africa. This great feat, accordingly, was at length achieved by Vasco de Gama, who, in 1497, four years after the

discovery of America by Columbus, persisted in his course to the south so far as to double the Cape of Good Hope, and point the way northward into the Indian Ocean. By his voyages and those of his successors, the eastern coast of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope through the Mozambique Channel to the Red Sea, was soon defined as accurately as the western coast had been by the voyages of his predecessors; and thus the entire outline and shape of the African continent were at length made known. This great service to science and to the human race was rendered, it ought to be remarked, by the Portuguese, who may be said to have conducted the enterprise of the circumnavigation of Africa from its beginning to its end; and this is perhaps the greatest contribution which the Portuguese, as a nation, have made to the general fund of human knowledge.

The outline of Africa having thus been laid down on the maps, and the extent of its surface ascertained, the attention of discoverers was next turned to its interior. The efforts made by the Portuguese to explore Nigritia in search of Prester John have been already alluded to; but it was by the other nations of Europe, especially the English, the French, and the Dutch, who, on the decline of the Portuguese power, began to compete with each other in this field of enterprise, that the greatest advances were made in the knowledge of the geography of the various parts of Africa, and of the races which inhabit it. For these last two hundred years, discoverers and travellers of various nations have been adding to our information respecting this vast continent; and in consequence of their joint labours, some in one part, some in another, we are now able to form an idea, very general, it must be admitted, but still tolerably distinct, of Africa and its inhabitants. In presenting a summary view of the progress of African discovery, from the period of the final circumnavigation of the continent, and its correct delineation in outline, down to the present time, it will be advantageous to take up its various divisions in the following order: -Western Africa, Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa or Nigritia, and Northern Africa, including the Great Desert.

WESTERN AFRICA.

The shores of Western Africa, especially those which border the Gulf of Guinea, have retained to the present time the distinction which they acquired at the period of their discovery by the Portuguese, of being the market which European ships visit for African commodities.

The Portuguese, as we have already mentioned, were the first to plant factories along this coast, from the southern termination of the Great Desert to Congo, and other maritime districts south of the equator. Allured by the profits of the slave trade, other European nations hastened to occupy stations on the same coast; and towards the end of the eighteenth century, the number of

European forts and factories round the shores of the Gulf of Guinea were said to be forty in all: of which fifteen belonged to the Dutch, fourteen to the English, four to the Portuguese, four to the Danes, and three to the French. Deriving its principal commercial importance from the trade in negroes, which this chain of forts was intended to guard, Western Africa has, since the abolition of the slave trade, fallen considerably out of view. According to the best information, however, that has been obtained, "the territory is in the possession of a number of petty states, many of which compose aristocratic republics, turbulent, restless, licentious, and generally rendered more depraved by their intercourse with Europeans."

Proceeding from north to south, let us briefly notice the various countries of the western coast, with the tribes which inhabit them. The most northerly is Senegambia, the name applied to the district watered by the two rivers Senegal and Gambia, commencing from the Desert, and extending as far as the Grain Coast. According to Mungo Park, this territory is inhabited by four tribes the Feloops, the Jaloffs, the Foulahs, and the Mandingoes. In all of these tribes, part are Mohammedans by profession; but the great body of the people are Pagans, called by their Mohammedan brethren Kafirs, or infidels, and practising the Fetish form of worship; that is, the worship of inanimate objects. The Feloops were described by Park as a gloomy and revengeful race, but honourable and faithful in their dealings with friends; the Jaloffs as an active and warlike people, with jet-black skins, among the most handsome of the negroes, divided into several principalities, and excelling in the manufacture of cotton cloth; the Foulahsa race of more importance in Africa than Park imagined-as of a tawny complexion, with soft silky hair and pleasing features, much attached to a pastoral life; and the Mandingoes, who are by far the most numerous people in this part of Africa, as of a mild, sociable, and obliging disposition, the men commonly above the middle-size, well-shaped, strong, and capable of enduring great labour, the women good-natured, sprightly, and agreeable.

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The tract of country adjoining Senegambia on the south, and stretching along the Gulf of Guinea from the Grain Coast to the Bight of Biafra, has been named Upper Guinea, and includes, besides the colonies of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory and Gold Coasts, so noted for their unhealthiness, three native statesnamely, Ashantee, Dahomey, and Benin. Our information respecting these negro kingdoms is derived from the discoveries of various travellers, among whom may be mentioned Mr Norris, who undertook a journey to the court of the king of Dahomey in 1772, with the hope of making arrangements beneficial to English trade; Mr Bowditch, who took part in a mission for a similar purpose to the king of Ashantee in 1817; and Captain Adams, who visited Benin at a later period.

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