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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



The mineral wealth of Africa in iron, copper, 

 and other metals, has been often spoken of, and 

 is no doubt of great importance to its inhabitants. 

 It cannot, however, be seriously proposed to ex- 

 port these heavy articles from the far interior to 

 the coast. It so happens that ores of malachite 

 do exist in large quantities in Benguela, at not 

 more than 140 miles from the sea, and that their 

 export has been attempted by English companies. 

 But though the mines were rich the cost of pro- 

 duction and carriage exceeded the value of the 

 ore ; they therefore failed to repay the advent- 

 urers. If it did not pay to work these mines, so 

 favorably situated for the purpose in many re- 

 spects, how can it be reasonably hoped that 

 foreigners will be able to work mines situated in 

 the far interior to an advantage ? 



There is certainly one peculiar product of 

 Africa, namely ivory, which has had, and which 

 will long have, a large influence in promoting its 

 commerce and consequent civilization. It is 

 gratifying to learn from Mr. Stanley that ivory 

 abounds on the Upper Congo. Near the conflu- 

 ence of the Aruwimi, he saw a village where the 

 quantity of ivory lying useless about astonished 

 him. 



" There was an ivory ' temple ' — a structure of 

 solid tusks surrounding an idol ; ivory logs, which, 

 by the marks of hatchets visible on them, must 

 have been used to chop wood upon; ivory war- 

 horns, some of them three feet long ; ivory mallets, 

 ivory wedges to split wood, ivory pestles to grind 

 their cassava, and before the chiefs house was a 

 veranda, or burzah, the posts of which were long 

 tusks of ivory. We picked up 133 pieces of ivory 

 which, according to rough calculation, would real- 

 ize, or ought to realize, about $18,000." 



Unfortunately, so soon as an ivory traffic is 

 established, and as a consequence of it, guns are 

 freely purchased, and the export of the ivory 

 thenceforward proceeds far more rapidly than 

 the ivory can be reproduced. Such stores of it 

 as may exist are soon made away with, while the 

 elephants are shot down in such large numbers that 

 they become rapidly exterminated. When the 

 ivory-trade shall have died away through exhaus- 

 tion of these animals, one of the agents that are 

 best suited to promote the civilization of Africa 

 will have disappeared. Leaving aside philan- 

 thropic considerations for the moment, and look- 

 ing at Africa from the point of view of our own 

 ancestors, and of the modern Arab, and of a very 

 large portion of the remainder of the human race, 

 there was a singular congruity between the old- 

 fashioned ivory and slave traffic and the physical 



as well as the social conditions of the continent. 

 Enslavement of a weaker neighbor has ever been 

 the recognized custom of the country; and it 

 was a charmingly naive device of turning their 

 superfluous slaves and their collections of ivory 

 to commercial account, to put a tusk on the back 

 of each slave and march him with his burden to 

 the coast, selling both the porter and the ivory on 

 their arrival there. But we may, fortunately for 

 Africa, with much commercial advantage, substi- 

 tute the labor of cattle for that of human porters. 

 The tsetze-fly is not so widely spread as had been 

 feared. The Cape wagon with its yokes of oxen 

 has already been driven inland from the coast 

 opposite Zanzibar, and one wagon will carry the 

 loads of sixty men. Looked at merely as beasts 

 of burden, negro porters, even if bought for noth- 

 ing, and sold at some few pounds a head on reach- 

 ing the coast, are not so cheap and effective on 

 an established route as a wagon and its team of 

 oxen. 



There is one mineral product which may pos- 

 sibly be destined to transfigure Africa, and that 

 is gold. We know that it is found in many parts 

 of the boundary ridge of the central basin. 

 There is the gold of Abyssinia and Sennaar, and 

 on the opposite side of the continent, gold is col- 

 lected from all parts of the high land parallel to 

 the coast between the mouths of the Senegal and 

 the Niger. It has given its name to the Gold 

 Coast, and our name of the guinea is derived 

 from the gulf of Guinea. Moreover, a steady ex- 

 port of gold has existed from apparently the most 

 ancient historical times, by routes leading from 

 the landward side of the districts in which it is 

 found across the Sahara to the Mediterranean. 

 But above all in present productiveness are the 

 recently-discovered gold-fields in Southeastern 

 Africa. Its export from Sofala and the Zambesi 

 district is of ancient date, but within the last few 

 years a vast extent of country to the south- 

 ward of this has been found to be auriferous. 

 Should further discoveries of gold be made, they 

 may supply the inducement that at present is 

 needed for men of other races than the negro, 

 such as the Chinese coolie, to emigrate, and, by 

 occupying parts of the continent, to introduce a 

 civilization superior to that which at present ex- 

 ists. 



Africa affords a motive for settlements of a 

 few white men in a line down the middle of its 

 interior. for the establishment of an overland 

 telegraph between Alexandria and the Cape, in- 

 stead of, or in addition to, the costly and precari- 

 ous alternative of an ocean-cable. At first sight, 



