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REGENERATION OF THE DARK CONTINENT. 
The Sahara is by no means the sea of sand it has sometimes 
been represented; it contains elevated plateaux and even mountains 
radiating in all directions, with habitable valleys between. A con¬ 
siderable nomadic population is scattered over the habitable parts, 
and in the more favored regions there are settled communities. 
The Sudan, which lies to the south of the Sahara, and separates 
it from the more elevated plateau of Southern Africa, forms a belt 
of pastoral country across Africa, and includes the countries on the 
Niger, around Lake Tchad (or Chad), and eastwards to the 
elevated region of Abyssinia. 
FERTILITY OF SOIL OF SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
Southern Africa as a whole is much more fertile and better 
watered than northern Africa, though it also has a desert tract of 
considerable extent (the Kalahari Desert). This division of the 
continent consists of a table-land, or series of table-lands, of con¬ 
siderable elevation and great diversity of surface, exhibiting hollows 
filled with great lakes, and terraces over which the rivers break in 
falls and rapids, as they find their way to the low-lying coast tracts. 
The mountains which inclose Southern Africa are mostly much 
higher on the east than on the west, the most northerly of the 
former being those of Abyssinia, with heights of 10,000 to 14,000 
or 16,000 feet, while the eastern edge of the Abyssinian plateau 
presents a steep unbroken line of 7,000 feet in height for many 
hundred miles. Farther south, and between the great lakes and 
the Indian ocean, we find Mounts Kenia and Kilimanjaro (19,500 
feet), the loftiest in Africa, covered with perpetual snow. 
Of the continuation of this mountain boundary we shall only 
mention the Drakenburg Mountains, which stretch to the southern 
extremity of the continent, reaching in Cathkin Peak, Natal, the 
lieight of over 10,000 feet. Of the mountains that form the west¬ 
ern border the highest are the Cameroon Mountains, which rise 
to a height of 13,000 feet, at the inner angle of the Gulf of Guinea. 
The average elevation of the southern plateau is probably from 
3,000 to 4,000 feet. 
The Nile is the only great river in Africa which flows to the 
