270 THE DARK CONTINENT. 



However, by means of the Arab conquest the East 

 was united as it had never been before. The Euphrates 

 was no longer a line of partition between two worlds. 

 Arab traders established their factories on both sides 

 of the Indian Ocean and along the Asiatic shores of 

 the Pacific. Men from all countries met at Mecca 

 once a year. The religion of the Arabs conquered 

 nations whom the Arabs themselves had never seen. 

 When the Mahometan Turks of Central Asia took 

 Constantinople, and reduced the Caliphates to pro- 

 vinces, although the people of Mahomet were driven 

 back to their wilderness, the strength and glory of his 

 religion was increased. In the same manner the 

 conquest of Hindostan was an achievement of Islam, 

 in which the Arabs bore no part, and in Africa also 

 we shall find that the Koran reigns over extensive 

 regions which the Arabs visit only as travellers and 

 merchants. 



Once upon a time Morocco and Spain were one 

 country, and Europe extended to the Atlas mountains, 

 which stood upon the shores of a great salt sea. 

 Beyond that ocean, to the south, lay the Dark Conti- 

 nent, surrounded on all sides by water, except on the 

 north-east, where it was joined to Asia near Aden by 

 an isthmus. A geological revolution converted the 

 African ocean into a sandy plain, and the straits of 

 Bab-el-Mandeb and Gibraltar were torn open by the 

 retreating waves. But the Sahara, though no longer 

 under water, is still in reality a sea ; the true Africa 

 commences on its southern coast, and is entirely dis- 

 tinct from the European- like countries between the 

 Mediterranean and the Atlas, and from the strip of 

 garden land which is cast down every year in the desert 

 by the Nile. The Black Africa or Soudan is a gigantic 



