INTRODUCTION. 



Early Civilization in Northern Africa — The Limit of the Ancient Civilization- 

 Theatre of Mythology — Saracen Conquest — Settlement of Soudan — Mohamme- 

 dan Failure — The Fifteenth Century — Gilianez Passed Cape Bojador — Portu- 

 guese Efforts on the West Coast — Roman Catholicism — The Failure — England 

 and France — Richard Jobson — Mungo Park — Denham and Clapperton — 

 Richard Lander Dispels the Niger Mystery — Kingdoms on the West — Da- 

 homey, Ashantee, etc. — The Cape Settlement — Vasco de Gama — The Settle- 

 ment of Natal by the English — Lieutenant Christopher — Abyssinia and the 

 Nile — Bruce and Dr. Beke — The Nile Mystery as it Stands — The Unknown — 

 Livingstone. 



In those remote ages, when the Mesopotamian plain is repre- 

 sented in Scripture history as little more than a wide and open 

 common, the northern shores of Africa sustained a powerful and 

 splendid civilization. " When Greece was under the tumultuary 

 sway of a number of petty chieftains, Homer already celebrates 

 the hundred gates of Thebes and the mighty hosts which in 

 warlike array issued from them to battle." Before the faintest 

 dawn of science had illumined the regions of Europe, the valley 

 of the Nile was the abode of learning and distinguished for its 

 incomparable works in sculpture, painting and architecture. 

 "And while Egypt was thus preeminent in knowledge and art, 

 Carthage equally excelled in commerce and in the wealth pro- 

 duced by it, and rose to a degree of power that enabled her to 

 hold long suspended between herself and Rome the scales of 

 universal empire." 



Carthage sunk amid a blaze of glory in her grand struggle with 

 Rome, toward which falling kingdoms of all later time have 

 looked with envy. And the land of the Pharaohs, whose alter- 

 nate splendor and slavery had been the admiration and astonish- 

 ment of the ages, came also at length under the hand of the 

 Caesars. The fostering republic soon rekindled the fires which 

 the tide of war had extinguished, and Northern Africa was still 

 opulent and enlightened, "boasting its sages, its saints, its heads 



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