Central Africa Never Having Been
Submerged, The Animals And Races Must Be As Old, And May Be Older, Than
Any Upon The Earth.
No geological change having occurred in ages long anterior to man, as
shown by Sir R. I. Murchison theoretically so far back as the year 1852,
when Central Africa was utterly unknown, it is natural to suppose that
the races that exist upon that surface should be unaltered from their
origin.
That origin may date from a period so distant, that it preceded
the Adamite creation. Historic man believes in a Divinity; the tribes of
Central Africa know no God. Are they of our Adamite race? The equatorial
portion of Africa at the Nile sources has an average altitude above the
sea-level of about 4,000 feet; this elevated plateau forms the base of a
range of mountains, that I imagine extends, like the vertebrae of an
animal, from east to west, shedding a drainage to the north and south.
Should this hypothesis be correct, the southern watershed would fill the
Tanganika lake: while farther to the west another lake, supplied by the
southern drainage, may form the head of the river Congo. On the north a
similar system may drain into the Niger and Lake Tchad: thus the
Victoria and the Albert lakes, being the two great reservoirs or sources
of the Nile, may be the first of a system of African equatorial lakes
fed by the northern and southern drainage of the mountain range, and
supplying all the principal rivers of Africa from the great equatorial
rainfall. The fact of the centre of Africa at the Nile sources being
about 4,000 feet above the ocean, independently of high mountains rising
from that level, suggests that the drainage of the Equator from the
central and elevated portion must find its way to the lower level and
reach the sea. Wherever high mountain ranges exist, there must also be
depressions; those situated in an equatorial rainfall must receive the
drainage from the high lands and become lakes, the overflow of which
must form the sources of rivers, precisely as exemplified in the sources
of the Nile from the Victoria and the Albert lakes.
The fact that Sir Roderick Murchison, as a geologist, laid down a theory
of the existence of a chain of lakes upon an elevated plateau in Central
Africa, which theory has been now in great measure confirmed by actual
inspection, induces me to quote an extract from his address at the
anniversary meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, 23d May, 1864. In
that address, he expressed opinions upon the geological structure and
the races of Central Africa, which preceded those that I formed when at
the Albert lake. It is with intense interest that I have read the
following extract since my return to England: -
"In former addresses, I suggested that the interior mass and central
portions of Africa constituting a great plateau occupied by lakes and
marshes from which the waters escaped by cracks or depressions in the
subtending older rocks, had been in that condition during an enormously
long period.
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