THE 
VoL. VII MAY, 1896 No. 5 
AFRICA SINCE 1888, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
SOUTH AFRICA AND ABYSSINIA* 
By Hon. Gardiner G. Hubbard, LL. D., 
'President of the National Geographic Society 
Eight years ago I selected Africa as the subject of ni}'- annual 
address before the National Geographic Societ}". Since then the 
nations of Europe, seeking new outlets for trade and possible 
homes for their surplus population, have taken possession of the 
larger part of the continent. They have developed Africa more 
rapidly than in an}’’ preceding age, and have greatly increased 
our knowledge of it. 
Africa and America were discovered about the same time — the 
one by Portugal, the other by Spain. Soon afterward the slave 
trade was established between the two continents to supply the 
place of Indian labor, the natives of America, unable to stand the 
tasks imposed ui>on them liy the Spaniards, having been extermi- 
nated. This trade proved so profitable that England soon took 
part in it, exchanging her })roducts for slaves transj)orted to 
the Spanish colonies in America. This continued for two hun- 
dred and fifty years, or until the early j>art of the nineteenth 
century, when the slave trade was abolished and the trade in 
intoxicating liquors substituted, which has been to the African 
a greater evil than the slave trade. A recent writer says that 
four million gallons of the most jtoisonous gin and rum arc im- 
ported yearly into the Nagos and Niger coast protectorates. 
•Annual presidential address, delivered April 24, 1890. 
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