16 G. G. Hubbard— Geographic Progress of Civilization. 
of America the Britons made little progress in population, wealth 
or civilization. 
Later, Hawkins, Drake and others saw that the African slave 
trade was very profitable; so with the aid of Elizabeth they 
built ships, captured negroes in- Africa, and carried them to 
the West Indies, where they were sold as slaves. Their fol- 
lowers became buccaneers and pirates, finding that occupation 
still more profitable. Leaders and seamen were thus trained 
for the war with Spain, which resulted in the destruction of the 
Armada and made England a maritime power. She founded 
colonies in North America, captured islands in the West Indies 
and Pacific, and subsequently acquired India; Cape Colony and 
the Gold coast in Africa, with all of Australia and New Zealand. 
England became a great commercial and mercantile nation, a 
mother of nations; coal and iron mines were opened, the steam 
engine and steam ships were invented; she became a manu- 
facturing nation, the carrier and banker of the world, and her 
wealth and prosperity increased and still continue to grow. 
Africa. 
Over against Greece and Italy and in sight of the Iberian 
peninsula is Africa, the eldest of the continents, the birth-place 
of European civilization. j 
In its physical aspect, its population and its civilization, Africa 
is unlike the other continents. It is a huge peninsula, with few 
bays and gulfs, scarcely any islands, without good harbors or 
rivers navigable from the ocean into the interior. It has only 
one-fourth as much sea-coast in proportion to its area as Europe, 
and only one-third as much as America. It is the only conti- 
nent in which the largest part of its territory lies within the 
tropics. As the éarth here spontaneously furnishes food for the 
sustenance of man, and as only scanty clothing is required, all 
inducements to either mental or manual labor are wanting. 
In all the continents we find traces of inhabitants of a different 
race from those now peopling them, but in no other country are 
the movements of different races so well marked as in Africa. 
The Arabs who now inhabit the northern part of Africa drove 
the former occupants, the Bantus, toward central Africa; they 
in their turn dispossessed the Negro, while the Negro dispos- 
sessed the Dwarfs and their kinfolk the Bushmen and the Hot- 
tentots, who were probably the aborigines. The Dwarfs retreated 
— os 
