North Africa

“ All the original population of North Africa appear to have been a race of the Semitic stock, who, by intermarriage with tribes which came from Egypt, or by way of it, had received a certain admixture. ”

“ North Africa and the Berber stock.North Africa, in a physical and ethnographic point of view, stands by itself like an island. Nature has isolated it on all sides, partly by the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, partly by the widely-extended shore, incapable of cultivation, of the Great Syrtis below the modern Fezzan, and, in connection therewith, by the desert, likewise closed against cultivation, which shuts off the steppe-land and the oases of the Sahara to the south. ”

“ The general language of North Africa is the Western Arabic, with a knowledge of which language, a traveller may make himself intelligible wherever he may go; either in the negro countries of Sudan, in Egypt, Abyssinia, Sahara, or Barbary. ”

“ The individual German may come and do a little trading on his own account, but it is France as a nation that is going to prosper out of Africa. This is the one paramount aspect of the real North Africa of to-day as it has been for some generations past, a fact which the Foreign Offices of many powers have overlooked. ”

“ And since it is seen that the aborigines of Northern Africa consisted, with the exception of the Negro tribes, of the Asiatics of the Caucasian race or variety, many of whom, like the Phoenicians, have peopled various cities and provinces of Europe, it is therefore not astonishing we should find all the large towns and cities of North Africa, where the human being becomes policed, refined and civilized sooner than in remote and thinly-inhabited districts, teeming with a population, which at once challenges an European type, and a corresponding origin with the great European family of nations. ”

“ In regard to the population, as well as its geographical character, Africa naturally divides itself into two great portions, north and south of the mountains of Kong and the Jebel el Komar, which give rise to the waters of the Senegal, the Niger and the Nile. To the north of this line, Africa is ruled, and partially occupied by foreign races, who have taken possession of all the fertile districts, and driven the aboriginal population into the mountains and deserts of the interior. ”

“ From a zoological point of view Africa north of the Sahara is now and has been since early Tertiary times a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians while the ancient Egyptians and their modern descendants, the fellaheen, are merely well-marked varieties of this Mediterranean race. ”

“ Now the chain of missions is almost complete from Mombasa to the mouth of the Congo, and there are scattered through inner Africa hundreds of churches and Christian schools and over 100,000 native Christians.”
“Three distinct Africas are known to the modern world—North Africa, where men go for health; South Africa, where they go for money; and Central Africa, where they go for adventure. ”

“ Thirteen hundred years ago they came to North Africa from out of the East, bringing with them a civilisation and a culture and institutions distinctively their own. Retreating into their mountain fastnesses before that Arab invasion which spread the faith of the Prophet over all North Africa, they have dwelt there ever since, the French, who conquered them in the middle of the last century only after heavy losses, having wisely refrained from interference in their tribal laws or customs, which remain, therefore, almost unmodified. ”

“ Thus in North Africa the governors are sent by France, in the Congo lands by Belgium, in East Africa by England, in some other parts by Portugal. These are different European nations who send men to keep peace, and to make it possible to carry on trade. ”

“ We here trace a historical thread which guides us through this labyrinth of tribes and overthrown kingdoms; and a lively interest is awakened by reflecting on their possible progress and restoration, through the intercourse with more civilized parts of the world. Finally, we find here commerce in every direction radiating from Kanó, the great emporium of Central Africa, and spreading the manufactures of that industrious region over the whole of Western Africa. ”

“ But France has also gained a huge extent of country covering almost the whole of North-West Africa. While much of this is merely desert, there are caravan routes which tap the basin of the Niger and conduct its products to Algeria, conquered by France early in the century, and to Tunis, more recently appropriated. The West African provinces of France have, at any rate, this advantage, that they are nearer to the mother-country than any other colony of a European power ”

“ Practically, France will now have all North-Western, and all Northern, and all North Central Africa, except Morocco, our West African Colonies, Tripoli, Darfur, and the Valley of the Nile,—giving that phrase its widest interpretation, and regarding it as the whole of the country whence water flows into the Nile. ”

“ AFRICA is less known than any of the other divisions. The greater part of the inhabitants are in a state of barbarism. Nearly three-quarters of Africa lie in the torrid zone, and the dark complexion and savage character of the inhabitants, and the ferocity of its wild beasts, seem in unison with the excessive heat of the sun, and the frightful aspect of the deserts.
The West India Islands lie in the Atlantic Ocean, between North and South America, in the torrid zone. They belong principally to European nations. ”

“ If the Moors and Arabs cannot or will not secure these common human conditions for me in North Africa, I am quite prepared to cooperate with the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli, with the Russians in Siberia, with all three and the English and Germans as well in Africa, or with the Americans in the hunting grounds of the red man, to civilize these places ”

“ This is the object of our occupation of the various territories under the British flag, and of the Germans in the East and South-west Africa, and, I believe, of the French in the north, to make new markets and open up country for coming generations; to suffer temporary loss for the future benefit of overcrowded humanity. Experience and the suitability of our institutions are the reasons of our success. ”

“ It is a land where the sky is without cloud, and the earth without shade. These deserts, which are not lacking in grandeur and attraction, mark, north and south, the true boundaries of Africa. Beyond them, north and south—to the north, Mauretania, Algeria, Egypt; to the south, the region of Cape Colony—the soil, the climate, the fauna and flora, the inhabitants are no longer characteristically African, but European.
II. The Inhabitants.—The most recent statistics give the population of Africa as from 160,000,000 to 200,000,000 souls. ”

“ It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of the nineteenth century that a complete continent remained thus until late in the history of the world to serve as a new field for the outpouring of the nations. The occupation of Africa by Europeans, indeed, began earlier. The Arabs had held the section north of the Sahara for many centuries, Portugal claimed—but scarcely occupied—large sections east and west, and the Dutch had a thriving settlement in the south. ”

“ Introduction—The African Association—Ledyard—Lucas—First information respecting the Niger, or Quorra, and the Gambia—Timbuctoo heard of—Thompson and Jobson’s voyage up the Gambia—Major Haughton’s expedition and death.
When the fathers of the present generation were young men, and George the Third ruled the land, they imagined that the whole interior of Africa was one howling wilderness of burning sand, roamed over by brown tribes in the north and south, and by black tribes—if human beings there were—on either side of the equator, and along the west coast. ”

“ The same diversity of soil and produce which the regions traversed by me exhibit is also observed with respect to man. Starting from Tripoli in the north, we proceed from the settlements of the Arab and the Berber, the poor remnants of the vast empires of the middle ages, into a country dotted with splendid ruins from the period of the Roman dominion, through the wild roving hordes of the Tuarek, to the Negro and half-Negro tribes, and to the very border of the South African nations. In the regions of Central Africa there exists not one and the same stock, as in South Africa ”

“ We only claim to have barred for a time the periodic flights of these interesting features of Africa, from 10° north latitude to as far as 20° south latitude, and from east to west Africa, and to have located with reasonable precision the grand old Mountains of the Moon, and the Albertine and Victorine sources of the Nile. And for a time only! For “what profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. ”

“ Intended originally as a book of travel, it has in places become complicated, obscure and overladen with some of the fruits of inquiry in a vast field, namely, the origin and nature of all the peoples of North Africa. I shall feel amply rewarded if another student will allow his curiosity to be sufficiently stimulated to continue the work. ”

“ So that in this great land of Africa we have people living very different kinds of life, in the deserts, in the forests of the Congo, in Uganda and on the Nile, in the mines of South Africa, and on the great farms on the veld and in the great towns. The country itself is different in different parts: the sand in the north; Central Africa, with its hot sun and its lakes and rivers and mountains and forests; South Africa, with its great grassy plains, and the mines and towns joined by the railways which make it easy to get quickly to places far away. ”

“ For the philological geography of Africa it will be found useful to divide the continent into the following sections, regions, or areas: (1) The first division as North-Eastern until it approaches the Equator, and the parts between it and the Red Sea—in geography, Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia, in philology the Coptic, Beja, Nubian, and (in its geographical sense) the Abyssinian regions. (2) The Barbary States and Canary Islands. (3) The Desert, divided into the Western or Great (the Sahara) , and the Eastern (or Libyan) Desert. (4) Senegambia, or the drainages of the Senegal and Gambia. ”

“ E.g. the Congo railway.
These lakes, and the vast rift valley that contains them, are the natural highway which is fed by both sides of the continent. It must be remembered that Africa differs from other continents in the paucity of its outlets and means of outlet; no continent is so poorly endowed with harbours and navigable rivers for its size, excepting, perhaps, Australia, which is the antithesis of Africa in that its wealth lies along the coasts, while the centre is the pearl of Africa. Hence any route which offers natural advantages is of supreme importance. ”

“ Africa, to the North of the Niger, as is certified from the late discoveries, is almost universally Mohammedan; and to have been well received among one of the nations of that description, [xvii] would have been a strong presumption in favour of future efforts. ”

“ It is not needful, for the purposes of this story, to go over in detail the possessions, and their boundaries, of the various white nations in Africa. The French have a huge area in the north-west, reaching right down from Algeria to a junction with the Congo River. The Belgian Congo lies between that French area and British Rhodesia, which joins the other British colonies farther south. Great Britain has Nigeria on the west coast and British East Africa on the east. ”

“ Africa has about ten thousand miles of sea coast, and extends in depth near three thousand miles from east to west, and as much from north to south, stored with vast treasures of materials, necessary for the trade and manufactures of Great-Britain ”

“ In form Africa consists of two parts, a northern ellipsoid, with an east and west longitudinal axis, comprising the Sahara-Sudan region, and a southern triangular limb attached to the southern side of the eastern half of the northern portion, and consisting of the Congo region and the South African highlands. Somewhat north of the middle point of the eastern side of the continent, a massive triangular projection, the Somali Peninsula, extends almost 1000 miles toward the Indian Peninsula of Asia. ”

“ The whole of Central Africa, from Bagírmi to the east as far as Timbúktu to the west (as will be seen in my narrative) , abounds in these products. The natives of these regions not only weave their own cotton, but dye their home-made shirts with their own indigo. The river, the far-famed Niger, which gives access to these regions by means of its eastern branch, the Bénuwé, which I discovered, affords an uninterrupted navigable sheet of water for more than six hundred miles into the very heart of the country. ”

“ It gives rise to the two Sharys, which flow in opposite directions to the Quorra and the Lake Tchadda, and further north to the streams which flow to the same two recipients from about Kano and Kashna.
Though the knowledge of interior Africa now possessed by the civilized world, is the progressive acquisition of many enterprising men, to all of whom we are profoundly indebted, it cannot be denied that the last great discovery has done more than any other to place the great outline of African geography on a basis of certainty. ”

“ What does Africa,—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; ”