Africa (ăf'rĭ-kă). A hundred years ago the continent of Africa was almost unknown to the educated world of Europe and North America as regards its vast interior.
WHY AFRICA SO LONG REMAINED UNEXPLORED
Why was Africa the last of the great continents to be effectively opened up? Partly because of the comparative abundance of its negro population, its warlike character and sturdiness of physique, which made it a very serious enemy to the pioneer before the days of machine guns; partly because of the great heat, and most of all, the moist heat of much of Negro Africa, and of the germ-diseases more prevalent there than any other part of the globe; and partly, perhaps mainly, because of the remarkable continuity of the African coastline, the striking absence of those great gulfs, those far-reaching straits or inlets of the sea, those rivers navigable from their mouths upwards for hundreds of miles, which are so prominent a feature in the geography of Asia, Europe, and the eastern side of America. Any far-reaching exploration of the African continent had to be made by land, over a country more savage, less imbued even with the elements of civilization than Asia or America. The navigability of rivers where it was not barred by cataracts or shallows, was choked with a growth of vegetation, the riding animals (horses, asses, oxen) were killed by the bite of the tsetse fly or by some other injected germ disease. All Africa outside the waterless deserts must have seemed to the first pioneers impassable from thickets or forest. In short, it needed tremendous resolution and bravery and all the most recent appliances of civilization before Africa could be conquered for the white man’s knowledge. And this result has only been finally achieved within the memory of middle-aged people now living. In 1875 the interior of Africa was still very little known. By 1914 it had been made better known than the interior of Asia or South America.
AFRICA TEN MILLION YEARS AGO
Africa is a sister continent to South America, which it slightly resembles in shape. In the more ancient history of the earth (say ten million years ago), Africa was connected by a land bridge with South America on the one hand, with India, Ceylon, Malaysia, and Australia on the other; while Australia and New Zealand were probably connected with the west side of South America, and South America across Antarctica with Australia. This is virtually proved by the similarity and coincidence of geological formations and the possession of an almost uniform flora in the Mesozoic age. In fact, this great continental belt is sometimes called “Gondwanaland” (from the typical rocks of Gondwana in the Indiana Dekkan) and sometimes the Glossopteris Continent, because of the predominant vegetation prevailing at the beginning of the Secondary Epoch. These regions might also be termed the “Diamond” Continent; for all the detached portions at the present day agree in possessing diamonds. Outside their areas no true diamonds are found except some doubtful examples in North America and Scandinavia. It is further interesting to note that the diamonds of South Africa rather resemble in quality and composition those of Australia than those of Liberia (West Africa), which are more akin to the diamonds of India, Guiana, and Brazil. Long after Glossopteris land had been broken up, a land connection subsisted more or less between Tropical Africa and India, and still more, and still later, between West Africa and Brazil. This is the only supposition which will explain the remarkable correspondence in many features between the fauna and flora of Tropical Africa and Tropical America, especially the Brazil-Guiana region and the West Indies.
THE AFRICA OF TODAY
The Africa of today, which has been for two million years or so separated from the great island of Madagascar, extends but little either north or south into the Temperate Zones. It is perhaps the most tropical of the continents, presents the greatest amount of land area to the vertical sun, and is consequently the hottest of the continents. Its greatest length, 5,000 miles, is from north to south, from Latitude 37°20' N. (Cap Blanc, near Bizerta, in Tunis) to 34°51' S. (Cape Agulhas, Cape Colony); and its greatest breadth—about 4,000 miles— is from Senegal to the eastern horn of Somaliland. Its total area is about 11,500,000 square miles. The northernmost projection of the continent, Mauretania, is noteworthy, especially in its western portion, for its high plateaus and ranges of lofty mountains, which culminate in the Atlas peaks of Morocco, attaining to more than 15,000 feet in altitude and being under perpetual snow. The Tripolitaine, which lies to the east of Mauretania, is little else than the Mediterranean coast of the Sahara, and consists of ranges of stony hills, low mountains, and arid plateaus, with occasional wastes of shifting sand, and a few depressions known as oases, wherein an easily reached water-supply maintains a comparatively rich vegetation. Egypt is a prolongation of this desert region traversed by the course of the Nile, which in its delta completely banishes the desert and presents us with a region of fertile mud and rich vegetation of a European and Asiatic character. The Sahara Desert region extends with nothing but the interruption of the Nile—and the few miles of cultivated region on either side of the Nile, between the Red Sea on the east and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. Arabia carries on the characteristics of the Sahara to the south of Persia and the northwest of India.
MOUNTAINS AND PLATEAUS
In Eastern Nigeria between the Eastern Niger, the Benue, and Lake Chad, and on the southern frontier of the central Sahara, there are high mountains which may attain to as
