Page:LA2-NSRW-1-0040.jpg

AFRICA much as 7,000 feet, perhaps more. South of the Benue the country is very mountainous, with altitudes of as much as 8,000 feet. Advancing from the Benue towards the Gulf of Guinea, we meet with peaks mostly of volcanic origin of 9,000 and 10,000 feet, culminating in the great volcanic mountain of the Cameroons, which is about 13,000 feet and is occasionally capped with snow. A few miles away to the west of the Cameroons lies the 10,000 feet high valcanovolcano [sic] of Fernando Po Island. From the Cameroons southwards there is an almost unbroken range of mountains at no great distance from the coast, which, except for the passage of a few great rivers, is continuous with Table Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope. The greater part of the center of Africa from the southern Sahara Desert to the southernmost limits of the Congo, is at an average altitude of 1,500 feet above sea level (with depressed areas and ancient lake-basins here and there). On the east this comparative flatness gives place somewhat abruptly to plateaus of 6,000 to 8,000 feet in height, above which towers the snow range of Ruwenzori (the true Mountains of the Moon), nearly under the Equator.

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. This equatorial belt has some of the most splendid tropical forests the world can show. It is in this region also, especially in Central Africa, that some of the most rare and remarkable of African mammals continue to exist, such as the great Anthropoid Apes (Gorilla and Chimpanzi), the strange Drill and Mandrill Baboons, the Okapi, the Chevrotain, and (in Liberia) the Pygmy Hippopotamus and Zebra Antelope, The Lion has become extinct in North Africa within the last few years, but a Leopard of very large size still exists there, together with a Striped Hyena and the Common Jackal, the true Wild Boar, the Porcupine, and a Red Deer allied to that of Southern Europe. The Sahara Desert is by no means devoid of animal life. A few Lemurs (“half apes”) are still found in Tropical Africa and in Tropical Asia, but in Madagascar this group in the recent past developed extraordinarily. Within the human period there existed in Madagascar lemurs nearly as large as a man. Such remarkable forms are extinct now, as is also the gigantic bird of Madagascar, the Aepyornis, possibly the largest bird that this world has ever known, and the origin of the legend of the Rukh of the Arabian Nights. One of the most useful birds in Africa of the twentieth century is the Ostrich, which fortunately has been domesticated and brought into the service of man.

It was not, until 1884 that the wealth in gold of the Transvaal rocks was fully realized, and the gold industry centered in Barberton and Johannesburg was started on a large scale. Since then, the gold export of South Africa has risen to something like £36,000,000 (180,000,000 dollars) per annum. In the sixties of the last century, likewise, the existence of diamonds was made known in South Africa, and the working of diamonds brought immense wealth to that region and quite changed the history of the southern third of Africa. Within the last few years, however, diamonds have been discovered also in German Southwest Africa, in the south-western portion of the Congo basin, and in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. Gold has also been discovered and worked in the north-eastern basin of the Congo and in Liberia. It has also been worked intermittently for several centuries in Bambara, in the basins of the upper Sengal and upper Niger. Another great source of wealth peculiar to Africa is the oil palm, the full importance of which is scarcely yet realized. The two distinct oils which come, the one from the kernel and the other from the husk of the nut, are not only of great value as food products for both man and beast, but they furnish the best material for soap, and for a great many other industrial products, including lubricating oils for machinery, and a vegetable fat for making butter. Other products of great future value in Africa will be timber and rubber from the forests and the plantations, the banana (which though not in its cultivated form native to the continent, has been established there for untold centuries), and maize, which, though introduced from America, has found a second home in Africa. Besides the ostrich also, Africa in many parts is a splendid field for horse and cattle breeding. The horses of North Africa are in great demand. So also are certain breeds of sheep and goat. Madagascar is celebrated for its cattle and apparently is free from the pest of the tsetse fly.

The total population of Africa at the present day is probably something like 151,000,000, and apportioned racially would consist of 120,000,000 Negroes and Negroids, 6,000,000 pure-blooded Europeans (absolute White men of Northern or Mediterranean stock), and 25,000,000 of handsome, physically well developed, but mentally rather backward, dark-skinned Caucasians—Berbers, Arabs, Egyptians, Galas, and Abyssinians. Quite distinct, from the true Negro is the Bushman of South Africa, a somewhat (but not always) stunted race, with a yellow skin, very sparse and tightly curled hair, and other peculiar physical features not ordinarily met with in the Negro, though sometimes occurring in the people of the Mediterranean basin. The Hottentot is nothing but an early hybrid between the true Negro and the Bushman. 