240 E. a More— The Heart of Africa. 



healthy. In another sense, too, this outer belt is l:)oth rich and 

 unhaj^py. Into it come those men and things representing 

 " civilization " from afar. To it, from the interior, gravitate those 

 of the natives who are influenced by contact with those men and 

 things, deprived to a great extent of the old uncivilized condition 

 and its innocencies and partially imbued with what of civiliza- 

 tion has come to them. Mankind, too, in this outer belt is often 

 only too rank and unhealthy in his character. It is truly 

 " darkest Africa ; " for, first, the slave trade and then the rum 

 bottle have in many jjarts been the preponderating representa- 

 tives to them of outer civilization. 



The next layer is a step or terrace of fiat sandy semi-arid 

 country, narrow in the tropics, widening toward each extreme, 

 until it bulges out in the north into the Sahara desert, in the 

 south into the Kalahari, some parts always bare and sandy or 

 covered Avith a sparkling saline or alkaline deposit, some parts 

 forming broad savannas or prairies, bearing rich grasses in the 

 rains, liurnt bare in the dry season ; others covered with thickets 

 of thorns or stunted and crippled trees under the same variations 

 of seasons. This is the land of the ostrich and the pelican, the 

 scene of vast prairie fires or whirling dust spouts ; it is the land 

 also of the nomad man. Across the Sahara the wandering Arab 

 leads his camels from oasis to oasis; amid the wastes of the 

 Kalahari the homeless Bushman finds a. congenial hunting terri- 

 tory ; in the narrow, tropical parts such semi-nomads as the 

 Somali, the Wamasai, and the Wagogo lead their cattle from 

 place to place, as the grass and water serve them with the 

 seasons. 



This terrace or fiat sandy belt being crossed, we come to the 

 true central region of Africa, a' long irregular oval-shapecl eleva- 

 tion of mountain masses, spreading out in many places as vast 

 plateaus and forming altogether that mysterious elevated region 

 reported from time to time by old investigators as well as com- 

 pilers of native reports as the Mountains of the Moon. In the 

 crevices of this central mass, in rocky basins, in fathomless chasms, 

 in vast depressions of the plateaus, lie those great natural rain- 

 water tanks known as the central African lakes. On and around 

 it are the richest and most beautiful and healthful countries. 

 Spreading over it and around its beautiful waters are the most 

 intelhgent and industrious of the native African tribes, their 

 native industry and enterprise yet almost undisturbed by the 



