392 - — Gkvilized Nation in Ceniral Africa. 
26. Civilized Nation in Central Africa.*—We have received 
accounts of a recent discovery in Central Africa, which will 
soon be laid before the public in greater detail, but of which 
the following outline is sufficiently curious : Major Clapper- 
ton and Captain Denham, in the course of their late expedi- 
tion in that quarter of the world, arrived in the territory, and 
subsequently resided for some weeks, in the capital of a na- 
tion, whose manners and history seem likely to occupy, to no 
trivial extent, the attention of the public of this country—we 
might safely say of the whole civilized world. They founda 
nation jet black in colour, but not in our sense of the term 
negroes, having long hair and fine high features. This peo- 
ple was found to be in a state of very high civivization; 
and, above all, the British travellers witnessed a review of 
seven thousand cavalry, divided into regular regiments, and 
all clothed incomplete armour. Six thousand wore the per- 
fect hauberk mail of the early Norman knights : most strange 
by far of all, one thousand appeared in perfect Roman ar- 
mour. ‘The conjectures to which this has given rise are va- 
rious. We confess for ourselves that looking to the 
polished and voluptuous manners ascribed to this people, 
the elegance of their houses, &c., &c.; in a word, the total 
difference between them and any other race yet discovered in 
the interior of ‘* Africa, the mother of monsters,’?? our own 
opinion is strongly that here we havea remnant of the old 
Numidian population—a specimen of the tribes, who after 
long contending and long co-operating with imperial Rome, 
were at last fain to seek safety in the central Desert, upon the 
dissolution of the empire. In these squadrons Messrs. Clap- 
perton and Denham probably beheld the liveliest image that 
ever has been witnessed by modern eyes, of the legions of 
Jugurtha—may we not say of Hannibal? ‘The armour, we 
understand, is fabricated in the most perfect style of the art ; 
and the Roman suits may be taken for so many Hercula- 
nean or Pompeian discoveries, if it were possible for us to 
imagine the existence of genuine antiques, possessing all the 
glossy finish of yesterday’s workmanship. 
One of these travellers has already set off on his return to 
this sable court.—New Times, Sept. 27. 
* Copied from the London Philosophical Magazine and Journal for 
September 1825. 
