NATURAL FEATURES OF AFRICA. 21 



conical huts from ten to twelve feet in height ; they are 

 regularly distributed into labourers and soldiers, with others 

 holding the rank of king and queen. This latter person- 

 age, when she is about to add to the numbers of the tribe, 

 presents a most extraordinary spectacle, being then s\eelled 

 to many times the amount of her natural dimensions ; and 

 when the critical period arrives, instead of a progeny of two 

 or three, she produces as many thousands. These ants 

 are far from being of the same harmless description as the 

 corresponding insects of this quarter of the world. On 

 finding their way into a house, they devour every thing, 

 clothes, furniture, food, not even it is said sparing the in- 

 mates, who are compelled to make a speedy retreat. 



Such are the evils to which the people of this continent 

 are perpetually exposed from the lower creation ; and yet 

 they experience in full force the truth of the pathetic la- 

 mentation of the poet, that "man is to man the surest, 

 deadhest foe." Africa from the earUest ages has been the 

 most conspicuous theatre of crime and of wrong ; where 

 social life has lost the traces of primitive simplicity, with- 

 out rising to order, principle, or refinement ; where fraud 

 and violence are formed into national systems, and man 

 trembles at the sight of his fellow-man. For centuries this 

 continent has seen thousands of her unfortunate children 

 dragged in chains over its deserts and across the ocean, to 

 spend their lives in foreign and distant bondage. Supersti- 

 tion, tyranny, anarchy, and the opposing interests of num- 

 berless petty states, maintain a constant and destructive 

 warfare in this suffering portion of the earth. 



Nevertheless, compelled as we have thus been to describe 

 the ills of Africa, we should err very widely did we repre- 

 sent her as pervaded by one deep monotonous gloom. 

 Throughout the picture there are bright hghts interspersed, 

 which shine more conspicuously from the vast blanks and 

 deen|diiadows wdth which they are surrounded. In the 

 he£fl|f the most dreary and sandy wastes, there emerges 

 mar^a little oasis, or verdant islet, which to the wanderer 

 of the desert appears almost an earthly paradise. These 

 spots have been painted in colours that belong not to the 

 imperfect abodes of earth; as gardens of the gods, fairy- 

 fieats, islands destined to be the future mansions of the 

 blessed. In like manner, in tlie bosom of its wildest woods 



