312 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



THE BLACK MAN'S CONTINENT 



THE pictures published in this number 

 have been selected from several thou- 

 sand obtained by the Magazine during 

 the past year from all parts of the world. 

 Several of them were sent in by a member of 

 the National Geographic Society in Italian 

 Somaliland; others by Bishop Hartzell, of the 

 Methodist Episcopal Missions in Africa, and 

 for a number the Magazine is indebted to Dr 

 J. Scott Keltie, Secretary of the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society of London. About 25 are 

 from photographs by Dr C. E. Akeley, of the 

 Field Columbian Museum of Chicago. Dr and 

 Mrs Akeley spent nearly a year in that por- 

 tion of British East Africa, where President 

 Roosevelt will hunt during the coming months. 

 Dr Akeley was making natural history collec- 

 tions for the Field Columbian Museum, as well 

 as doing some hunting. The largest elephant 

 shot by Mrs Akeley is shown on page 244. 



The principal object of the map, published as 

 a supplement, is to show the commercial de- 

 velopment of the continent. Our original pur- 

 pose was also to give the tracks of the great 

 African explorers, but the continent has been 

 so repeatedly traversed from sea to sea in so 

 many directions that if the explorers' routes 

 had been shown we would have been obliged 

 to omit nearly everything else from the map, 

 and would also not have had room for all the 

 routes. 



Perhaps the most interesting feature of the 

 map are the red lines showing the net-work of 

 telegraphs in many sections. The reader will 

 probably be particularly surprised by the great 

 number of telegraph lines in French West 

 Africa along the Niger River. The French are 

 pushing the development of this region, and at 

 the same time building a magnificent harbor at 

 Dakar which, in a few years, will be the best 

 harbor on the West African coast. It will be 

 noted that the Cape to Cairo Telegraph line 

 requires only a few links for completion. 



All parts of the continent with the exception 

 of Morocco, Abyssinia, and the Spanish and 

 Portuguese territory, are now being exploited 

 by the European merchant and engineer, as- 

 sisted by American free-lances. Morocco prob- 

 ably offers greater possibilities than any other 

 section of Africa, and before long will be 

 compelled to yield to the commercial invasion. 

 The Portuguese possessions of Angola and 

 Portuguese East Africa are very rich in min- 

 erals, timber and forest products, but the little 

 kingdom which controls them is not able to do 

 much for their development. 



The Dark Continent has nearly three times 

 the area of the United States and Alaska. 

 Upon it you could place Europe, the United 



Area and Population of Africa* 





Area in 

 square 

 miles. 



Euro- 

 pean 

 popula- 

 tion. 



Native 

 popula- 

 tion. 



German Africa 



2,765,000 

 3,890,000 

 933,000 

 188.500 

 790,000 

 169,000 



399,000 



1,010,000 

 900,000 

 219,000 

 200,000 

 42,000 



1,070,000+ 

 825,000} 

 11,200 



4,5°° 

 4,000 

 600 



5,000 



117,000 

 3,000 

 3.000 

 1,000 

 100 



32,000,000 

 33,000,000 

 1 1,700,000 



850,000 

 5,000,000 



270,000 



1,000,000 



13,080,000 

 30,000.000 



6,000,000 

 10,000,000 



2,000,000 



Turkish Africa (Tri- 

 poli) 



Egyptian Africa (in- 

 cluding Anglo- 

 Egyptian Sudan) ... 



Congo State 



11,505.500 



2,044,400 



144,900,000 



*A11 figures are approximate. 



+Of whom 1,060,500 live in British South Africa and 

 Rhodesia. 



JOf whom 810,000 live in Algeria and Tunis. 



States and Alaska, and then add the Chinese 

 Empire. It is within a few square miles as 

 large as North America, Argentine, Brazil, and 

 Peru combined, but in spite of its tremendous 

 size it has a coast-line of only about 15,000 

 miles, whereas the coast-line of little Europe 

 exceeds 19,000 miles. As its coast-line is thus 

 nearly as monotonously regular as a circle, its 

 natural harbors are very few and far between. 

 Two-thirds of its area lies within the tropics 

 and has the sun vertical twice a year, while the 

 remaining one-third is practically all sub- 

 tropical. 



Africa differs from every other continent in 

 that it has no great mountain chain, as the 

 Alps in Europe, the Himalayas in Asia, and 

 the Rocky Mountains in the Americas. The 

 African mountains form very small groups at 

 great distances from each other. But on the 

 other hand, the average elevation of Africa is 

 1,900 to 2,000 feet, while the average elevation 

 of Europe is only 1,000 feet and of Asia 1,650. 

 The reason of this is that the great bulk of the 

 African continent is a plateau of from 500 to 

 2,000 feet elevation. There is a rim of lowland 

 around the coast, but one hundred miles or 

 more inland the continent rises abruptly. As a 

 result the great rivers which on the map ap- 

 pear to afford such splendid highways for com- 

 merce are choked by impassable cataracts only 

 a few miles from the seaboard. For instance, 

 200 miles of unnavigable cataracts block the 

 Congo only 150 miles from the sea. After 

 these cataracts are passed the river offers more 

 than 1,000 miles of splendid waterway into the 

 heart of Africa. 



