STANLEY'S DISCOVERIES AND TEE FUTURE OF AFRICA. 4H 



had accompanied a memorable expedition to the 

 southwest, as far as the borders of a large river, 

 of which I shall have another occasion to speak." 



A short account of the expedition that he ac- 

 companied is given in the " Journal of the Royal 

 Geographical Society." ' They passed through 

 Bimberri, a pagan country, to Kubanda, a large 

 place extending ten or twelve miles along the 

 banks of a river, so large that they could with 

 difficulty make out people standing on the south- 

 ern bank, and which was not fordable. This 

 river ran straight from east to west. In a second 

 expedition a little to the west of this, they reached 

 a pagan country, Andoma, inhabited by a very 

 warlike race, who had oxen and sheep. Their 

 country was covered with a great profusion of 

 trees, of which the native names are given. The 

 king sat on a throne constructed of elephants' 

 tusks laid one above the other. This latter state- 

 ment corresponds with Stanley's account of the 

 ivory structure of solid tusks surrounding an idol; 

 and as to the former Schweinfurth remarks that 

 among the trees mentiond by the Faki Sambo is 

 the " Kumba " — the Kumba being the name in 

 the Niam-niam language for the abundant Mala- 

 ghetta pepper (Xylopia JEthiopica), which has 

 communicated its name to the " Pepper Coast " 

 of Western Africa. This gives some ground for 

 supposing that the river of Kubanda debouches 

 on the coast of Western Africa. 



Mr. Stanley's discoveries come, therefore, 

 most opportunely in the present state of geo- 

 graphical science. They supply central threads 

 in the network of routes by which, through his 

 efforts, Africa is now finally covered. As it is, 

 perhaps, the greatest of the first-class explora- 

 tory achievements in Africa, so it is the last of 

 those which the world now admits other than in 

 the barren regions of either pole. It has dis- 

 sected and laid bare the very heart of the great 

 continent of Africa. 



It is not proposed in the following remarks to 

 trace the steps or to epitomize the discoveries of 

 Mr. Stanley. The materials are not before us, as 

 we pen these lines, for doing so with any ap- 

 proach to completeness or justice. But the oc- 

 casion is a good one to make some general 

 remarks on the proximate future of Africa, based 

 on the experiences of many previous travelers, 

 and confirmed by the geographical facts in their 

 broad outlines as now made known to us. 



What is the extent and value of the territory 

 that has been discovered in Equatorial Africa by 



1 " Journal of Royal Geographical Society," 1853, 

 p. 120. 



Mr. Stanley and his immediate predecessors, and 

 what action should be taken by ourselves or 

 others to turn these discoveries to the best ad- 

 vantage to themselves and to the world at large ? 

 In short, what do we find in Central Africa, and 

 what should we do with it ? 



The first consideration is that of mere size of 

 territory, comparing the area of the regions in 

 question with those situated between the same 

 latitudes in other parts of the world. They are 

 essentially equatorial regions, as distinguished 

 from tropical ones ; that is to say, they lie within 

 some twelve and a half degrees north and south 

 of the equator, where the climate tends to be 

 more hot and damp than under the tropics, and 

 where the vegetation is peculiarly luxuriant and 

 rank in regions little elevated above the sea-level. 

 There cannot be a greater contrast between ad- 

 jacent districts than that which, on the whole, sub- 

 sists between the equatorial and tropical regions. 

 We find in the latter the burning deserts and the 

 arid plains of the Sahara and Arabia, of those 

 near the Indus, of Utah and Colorado, in the 

 Northern Hemisphere, and those of Kalahari, 

 Central Australia, and Atacama. in the Southern. 

 We must, therefore, carefully distinguish between 

 equatorial and tropical lands, in making compari- 

 son between the area with which we are now 

 concerned in Africa and that of similar districts in 

 other parts of the globe. If we turn to a map of the 

 world, and reckon the amount of equatorial land 

 in Africa as five, we shall find the amount of 

 equatorial land in South and Central America to 

 be as four, and the aggregate of the remainder, 

 elsewhere on the globe, to be as one. The latter 

 is scattered in numerous fragments over all parts 

 of the huge equatorial zone that encircles the 

 world — the most important of these being the 

 southernmost horn of India, Ceylon, the Malay 

 Peninsula, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, 

 the northern shoulder of Australia, and a multi- 

 tude of islands in the Pacific, including our new 

 colony of Fiji. But the combined area of all this 

 is only about a fourth part of the area of the 

 corresponding regions of South America, and, 

 adding all together, we obtain a grand total of 

 equatorial land that is just equivalent in size to 

 that in Africa. The discoveries of Livingstone, 

 Burton and Speke, Cameron, and other recent 

 travelers, in addition to those of Stanley, have 

 made us acquainted with a region that is as large 

 as the whole of the equatorial lands that exist 

 elsewhere in the world. 



So much for mere size ; next as regards ele- 

 vation above the sea-level. The equatorial low- 



