2 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
and their descendants, that Africa has been taken 
seriously in hand. Indeed the persistent exploration of 
central Africa may be said only to have begun seriously 
half-a-century ago with Livingstone. During the last 
half-century more has been done to fill up the great 
white space that occupied the centre of this continent 
than had been done for 5000 years before. Although 
the present work will be mainly concerned with the 
journeys of some of the leading explorers of the past 
half-century, it may not be without interest in this 
introductory chapter to briefly run over some of the 
principal episodes of the many centuries that went 
before. 
Every reader of the Bible will remember that Africa 
was known to the Hebrews at a remote period. We 
have all read the story of the division of the earth 
among the sons of Noah-—Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 
Unfortunate Ham had the worst of the continents for 
his share, and almost since the days of Noah he has 
been the butt and the slave of his overbearing brothers. 
But, as a matter of fact, the true Hamites form but a 
small section of the population of Africa ; and instead 
of being enslaved they themselves are among the 
Greatest of slave-hunters and slave-holders. Much of 
O 
the population of the North of Africa, and of the east 
coast nearly as far as Zanzibar, is Hamitic. Probably 
the Hamites number about 18,000,000 altogether, out 
of a total population of 130,000,000, for in all pro¬ 
bability Africa does not contain more people than that; 
of that number about 100,000,000 are negroes and 
18,000,000 Bantus, the stock to which the Zulus belong. 
But civilisation in Africa is probably older than Noah 
and the Hebrews. When Joseph was taken there as a 
slave he found a civilisation that may have begun 2000 
years before his time, and probably the ruling race of 
the period were Hamites. It is remarkable that in this, 
the most backward of continents, one of the oldest if not 
indeed the oldest of civilisations begun its career some 
3000 or 4000 years before the Christian Era. But it is 
equally remarkable that a great and enterprising people 
