Savage Africa, 
II 
Its size and boundaries were clearly defined by Stanley. 
King M'tesa and his people live on the borders of this 
lake, and among them the Church Missionary Society has 
planted some flourishing missions. 
The productions of this vast tract of land are various 
and abundant Time was when, in maps of Africa, the 
interior was represented by the general term, " desert." 
But this was done in ignorance of the true state of the 
climate, people, and country. Explorers have, however, 
proved conclusively that the high table-land of Central 
Africa is fertile to an amazing extent It affords rich and 
luxuriant growth, combined with the most massive forms 
of animal life. Rice, maize, melons, wheat, barley, pulse, 
bananaSj yams, dates, olives, grapes, oranges, sugar, coffee, 
cotton, tobacco, and indigo, are to be found thriving in 
various parts of the land. Tropical Africa is the land of 
palms in all their picturesque beauty, and of gigantic 
baobabs. The latter tree is one of the most magnificent 
trees in point of size and extent; a trunk of this tree has 
been known to measure 104 feet in circumference, and to 
be not less than 5,000 years old. The age has been 
ascertained by counting the concentric rings. 
The climate of Central Africa, which varies considerably, 
influences vegetable growth, as it would naturally do over 
such a vast extent of country. Lying so near the Equator, 
it has only two seasons — a wet and dry. It is the hottest 
and driest of all the countries of the earth, in the dry season, 
and the most abundantly flooded, in the wet one ; while 
from the earth, during the rainy season, there arises a 
deadly steam or vapour, which means death, or, at least, 
fearful illness, to all Europeans. In its wake, come malaria, 
ague, fever, and dysentery, sweeping off unseasoned travel- 
lers with fearful rapidity. 
