Tropical Africa

“ In tropical Africa there is manifest coolness for three months of the year. During the other nine months there is so much cloud and such an abundance of tempering breezes, as to prevent that intense heat which one would expect under the Equator or within the tropics. The nights are seldom oppressive, and though in temperate latitudes one might not feel the need of a blanket, such an article becomes an indispensable luxury in Africa. ”

“ With our present imperfect knowledge of the interior of Africa, only three great continental sub-regions can be well defined. The open pasture lands of interior tropical Africa are wonderfully uniform in their productions; a great number of species ranging from Senegal to Abyssinia and thence to the Zambesi, while almost all the commoner African genera extend over the whole of this area. Almost all this extensive tract of country is a moderately elevated plateau, with a hot and dry climate, and characterised by a grassy vegetation interspersed with patches of forest. ”

“ The flora embraces the majority of the plants of the western coasts of tropical Africa that are known on the Gaboon, the Niger, and the Gambia, and overstepping the watershed dividing the Nile districts from the basin of the Tsad, opens to the traveller from the north the unexpected glory of the wildernesses of Central Africa. ”

“ Will any traveler, climatologist or ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. ”

“ Alfred Russel Wallace respecting the equatorial belt in general—a judgment which has at once sobered all modern descriptions of tropical lands, and made imaginative people more content to stay at home—applies almost to this whole area. The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms, the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and scenting the forests with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of insects, the gaily-plumaged birds, the paroquets, the monkey swinging from his trapeze in the shaded bowers—these are unknown to Africa. Once a week you will see a palm ”

“ Four territories are, so to speak, in the melting pot of political speculation—British Gambia, French Congo, Belgian Congo, and the Portuguese colonies of East and West Africa. None of the Powers in control of these territories desire to add another foot of tropical Africa to the burden they carry already. Great Britain has a full share of responsibilities in the African continent. France, Belgium and Portugal, even if they desired to enlarge their tropical dependencies, have not yet established a case for expansion. ”

“ More than any other land, Africa lies in the tropics, with a warm, dry climate, save in the central Congo region, where rain at all seasons brings tropical luxuriance. The flora is rich but not wide in variety, including the gum acacia, ebony, several dye woods, the kola nut, and probably tobacco and millet. ”

“ The higher plateaus, where not only is the average temperature lower, but such variations are more extensive, are more healthy; and in certain localities (e.g. Abyssinia and parts of British East Africa) Europeans find the climate suitable for permanent residence. On tablelands over 6500 ft. above the sea, frost is not uncommon at night, even in places directly under the equator. The acclimatization of white men in tropical Africa generally is dependent largely on the successful treatment of tropical diseases. ”

“ In my opinion, it would be necessary that tropical Africa should undergo a total physical revolution, that the long line of unhealthy coast should be upheaved, and the deadly leagues of pestiferous swamps be thus drained, before the country would be fitted for the existence of a higher type of mankind than the present negro race. ”

“ It cannot yet be proved that the white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa, but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun. ”

“ The amount of labour which she got through day by day in the debilitating climate of tropical Africa is amazing to many people of normal health, who perform their tasks in the comparatively bracing atmosphere of the homeland. ”

“ Without doubt, a series of professional observations and enquiry into the temperature and periodical variations of the climate of Africa, and its diseases, would be attended with the most important advantages to the science of physic, and might ultimately prove of incalculable consequence in preserving the valuable lives of our brave soldiers and sailors, exposed to all the ravages of tropical climates. ”

“ The present British Tropical African possessions have been, and are, very badly selected for any one of the purposes alluded to, or for extending political power and influence in Africa. Still much more may be made of them than has ever hitherto been done. ”

“ I cannot, for I know that no race of men can battle more gallantly with climate than the English—no other race of men has shown so great a capacity as we have to make the tropics pay. Still to-day we stand face to face with financial disaster in tropical regions.
If you will look through a list of England’s tropical unhealthy possessions, leaving out West Africa, you will see nothing but depression. There are the West Indies, British Guiana, and British Honduras. All of these are naturally rich regions and accessible to the markets of the world. ”

“ It is not, however, these tropical lowlands which are the most valuable and characteristic feature of East Africa, but the temperate highlands, which are not merely a planter's country, but suited to the permanent residence of Europeans. ”

“ The tropical regions of Africa are not so rich in the variety of plants as those of South America, but they present several kinds peculiar to Africa alone.
As the traveler leaves the sultry coast regions and ascends to the higher portions of land in the interior, he perceives a change in the character of the productions; for they present all the gradual changes noticeable in passing from a torrid to a temperate zone.
The forests of Africa cannot be said to rival those of Brazil, but they are rich in valuable woods, particularly the harder species. ”

“ We are now at an elevation of about four thousand feet, and steadily nearing the equator, although the climate gives little sign of it. It is a popular mistake that the nearer one goes to the equator the temperature must necessarily increase. Were this so, Africa, which is the most tropical continent in the world, would also be the hottest; while the torrid zone, which occupies so large a portion of it, would be almost insupportable to the European. On the contrary, the nearer one goes to the equator in Africa it becomes the cooler. ”

“ It is very important that the explorer be exceedingly careful at first, and that he watch the treacherous climate. Many white men in Africa have lost their lives by their own rashness. They go in the sun all day long after flowers, butterflies, insects, birds, or animals, and they perish in a few days, victims of the tropical climate. In the next place, one must not drink spirits. ”

“ As surely as the sun stands over the southern hemisphere in our winter and the northern in our summer, bringing the rains and the swellings of the tropical rivers when it is in the zenith with regard to them, so surely can it be predicated, from a comparison of the rainy seasons and times of rising, that the Lualaba belongs to no river of the northern hemisphere; in the southern hemisphere Africa possesses only one river, the Congo, which could take up the vast water supply of the Lualaba. ”

“ Successful colonial administration in Africa, as in all tropical countries, is largely a matter of temperament, and the stolid sons of the Fatherland seem, strangely enough, to be more quickly affected by the demoralising climate and to be irritated more easily than either the English or the French. ”

“ None but the highest and most fixed moral standards will bear transportation to a tropical climate and tropical society. Until this fact is clearly recognized the relation of civilization to the uncivilized tropics is likely to be productive of misery and shame. If I did not hate sensationalism I could easily fill this chapter with a record of the misdeeds and barbarities in Africa of men, many of whom belonged to [194] respectable families and to good society and were well-behaved at home.
Neither does the white man become acclimated in the tropics—no more than the diver in the deep sea. ”

“ Nowhere, indeed, in Africa have I experienced anything like the heat of a summer in Malta, or even of a stifling August in Southern Germany or Italy. On the other hand, the direct rays of the sun are necessarily more powerful in Africa; but so long as one keeps in the shade—and even a good umbrella suffices for this—there is nothing in the climate to disturb one's peace of mind or body. When one really feels the high temperature is when down with fever ”

“ If they are to be, it will mean the expenditure of much money, and, under existing circumstances of transport and housing, the climate of Bauchi has been over-praised. You have always the tropical African sun to reckon with, and there appears to be some subtly dangerous quality about it which even men who have lived in other tropical lands find very trying. ”

“ For ages upon ages, Africa has refused to reveal its secrets to civilized man, and, though explorers have penetrated it from every side, it remains to-day the dark continent. This isolation of Africa is due to its position and formation. It is a vast, ill-formed triangle, with few good harbors, without navigable rivers for ocean-vessels, lying mainly in the torrid zone. A fringe of low scorched land, reeking with malaria, extends in unbroken monotony all along the coast, threatening death to the adventurous explorer. ”

“ The largest lakes (Victoria, Albert, Albert Edward, Kivu, Tanganyika, and Nyassa) drain into the Nile, the Congo, or the Zambezi, and are fresh water bodies. Victoria, Tanganyika, and Nyassa rival in extent the great lakes of North America. For further details, see articles on Congo, Victoria Nyanza, etc.
Climate. Of all the great land divisions of the globe, Africa is characterized by the greatest uniformity of climate. It stretches into both the north temperate and south temperate zones, but the greater part of its area is included within the tropics ”

“ The "Dark Continent" is entirely destitute of the great estuaries and broad arteries giving access in the New World from the Atlantic seaboard almost to the foot of the Andes. The comparative absence of navigable waters, of islands and good harbours, combined with the great extent of desert wastes, has mainly contributed to exclude Africa from the general life of the commercial world.
All the great rivers — Nile, Congo, and Niger — are interrupted by cataracts and rapids, which cut off from outward intercourse populous regions whose fluvial systems ramify over many hundred millions of acres. ”

“ It is truly "darkest Africa;" for, first, the slave trade and then the rum bottle have in many parts been the preponderating representatives to them of outer civilization.
The next layer is a step or terrace of flat sandy semi-arid country, narrow in the tropics, widening toward each extreme, until it bulges out in the north into the Sahara desert, in the south into the Kalahari, some parts always bare and sandy or covered with a sparkling saline or alkaline deposit, some parts forming broad savannas or prairies, bearing rich grasses in the rains, burnt bare in the dry season ”

“ Following our concentric analysis, the first layer behind the outer skin of Africa may be said to consist of a verdant slope, broad and luxuriant in the tropics, where nature herself has been lavish, narrower, but still ever widening, in the drier north and south, as the oriental and the European respectively advance their groves of fruit and fields of corn, maintained in luxuriance alike by the vapors of the sea and the down drainage from the higher lands, and from the same causes also malarious and [p. 240] unhealthy. In another sense, too, this outer belt is both rich and unhappy. ”

“ Every change in the soil and climate of Africa is in extremes, and barrenness and unbounded fertility border on each other with a suddenness whereof the denizens of temperate climes can form no conception. As if by the touch of the magician’s wand, the scene now passes in an instant from parched and arid wastes to the green and lovely highlands of Abyssinia, presenting one sheet of rich and thriving cultivation. Each fertile knoll is crowned with its peaceful hamlet—each rural vale traversed by its crystal brook, and teeming with herds and flocks. ”

“ West Africa has a much greater rainfall than the eastern half of the continent. There is, however, a somewhat well-marked rainy equatorial belt, which extends from the Victoria Nyanza on the east to the Gambia River on the west, and expands over a good deal of the basin of the Congo, the lower and the upper Niger. ”