16 NOETH-EAST AFEICA. 



running birds the African ostricli is the most powerful. This continent excels not 

 only in the number and size of its animal species, but also in the multitude of 

 individuals. Thus on the central plateaux travellers have observed vast plains 

 covered by countless herds of ruminants, and Livingstone tells us that he had to 

 force his way through the dense troops of antelopes. But since then wide gaps 

 have already been made amongst these teeming multitudes by destructive hunting 

 expeditions in the Nile basin and in the southern plains. It is calculated that the 

 15,600 cwts. of ivory yearly imported into Europe cost the lives of 50,000 

 elephants. "Whole species are threatening to disappear, as the small Mauritanian 

 elephant and certain animal forms in the Mascarenhas Islands have already 

 vanished. The range of the rhinoceros formerly comprised south-west Morocco, 

 where it has not been seen in historic times. 



Inhabitants. 



During the first half of the present century European geographers, still 

 unacquainted with the interior, were naturally inclined to exaggerate the extent 

 of the desert regions, and readily regarded as solitudes all spaces left blank on the 

 maps. The continent was supposed to contain some fifty or sixty, or at the 

 utmost a hundred, million inhabitants. Since that time more accurate statistics 

 have been taken in some of the European colonies or possessions on the coast ; 

 rough estimates have also approximately determined the population of some 

 districts near the maritime ports, and travellers, yearly increasing in numbers, 

 have brought from the interior at least suflBcient data to enable us to classify the 

 inland regions according to the greater or less density of their populations. In 

 some of these districts the people are as closely packed as in Belgium, while 

 elsewhere village succeeds village for several leagues together. The basins of 

 Lake Tsad and the Joliba (Niger), as well as most of Nigritia south of the Sahara, 

 are thickly peopled, as are also the region of the great lakes, the Nile delta, the 

 White Nile in the Shilluk territory, and the lands watered by the Congo and its 

 chief afiluents. The population of the whole continent cannot be estimated at less 

 than two hundred millions, or seven times more than the calculations of Pinkerton 

 and Volney nearly a century ago. More recently Balbi fixed the number at sixty 

 millions, which was long accepted as the most probable. The hypothetical element 

 in all these rough estimates will doubtless be gradually diminished by the 

 systematic work of modern explorers.* 



To Africa the expression " Dark Continent " is frequently applied, as if all its 

 inhabitants were Negroes properly so called, analogous in type to the maritime 

 populations in the west equatorial region. The term Beled- es- Sudan, or " Black 

 Land," would thus be extended to the whole continent. But the true Negroes, 

 although perhaps forming a majority of the inhabitants, occupy less than half of 

 the land. The regions to the north, east, and south belong to tribes and peoples 

 of diverse physical appearance, and grouped in distinct races or sub-races. Some 

 * Approximate estimate of the population of Africa by Behm and "Wagner in 1882, 205,825,000. 



