Travels Of Richard And John Lander Into The Interior Of Africa For The Discovery Of The Course And Termination Of The Niger By Robert Huish
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The Spirit Of
Enterprise Has Carried Our Mariners To The Arctic Seas, Braving The
Most Appalling Dangers In The Solution
Of a great geographical
problem; by the same power, civilization has been carried into the
primeval forests of the American
Continent, and cities have arisen in
the very heart of the Andes. The interior of Africa, however,
notwithstanding its navigable rivers, has been hitherto almost a
sealed chapter in the history of the globe. The deserts, which extend
from Egypt to the Atlantic, and which cover a great surface of the
interior, have proved a barrier to the march of conquest, or
civilization; and whatever science has gained, has been wrested by
the utmost efforts of human perseverance and the continual sacrifice
of human life.
It must, however, be allowed that there are obstacles existing to the
knowledge and the civilization of central Africa, which cannot be
overcome by the confederated power of human genius. Extending 5000
miles in length, and nearly the same extent in breadth, it presents
an area, according to Malte Brun, of 13,430,000 square miles,
unbroken by any estuary, or inland sea, and intersected by a few long
or easily navigable rivers; all its known chains of mountains are of
moderate height, rising in terraces, down which the waters find their
way in cataracts, not through deep ravines and fertile valleys. Owing
to this configuration, its high table lands are without streams, a
phenomenon unknown in any other part of the world; while, in the
lower countries, the rivers, when swelled with the rains, spread into
floods and periodical lakes, or lose themselves in marshes. According
to this view of the probable structure of the unknown interior, it
appears as one immense flat mountain, rising on all sides from the
sea by terraces; an opinion favoured by the absence of those narrow
pointed promontories, in which other continents terminate, and of
those long chains of islands, which are, in fact, submarine
prolongations of mountain chains extending across the main land. It
is, however, not impossible, that in the centre of Africa, there may
be lofty table lands like those of Quito, or valleys like that of
Cashmeer, where, as in those happy regions, spring holds a perpetual
reign.
In regard to the population, as well as its geographical character,
Africa naturally divides itself into two great portions, north and
south of the mountains of Kong and the Jebel el Komar, which give
rise to the waters of the Senegal, the Niger and the Nile. To the
north of this line, Africa is ruled, and partially occupied by
foreign races, who have taken possession of all the fertile
districts, and driven the aboriginal population into the mountains
and deserts of the interior. It is consistent with general
experience, that in proportion as civilization extends itself, the
aboriginal race of the natives become either extinct, or are driven
farther and farther into the interior, where they in time are lost
and swept from the catalogue of the human race.
South of this line, we find Africa entirely peopled with the Negro
race, who alone seem capable of sustaining the fiery climate, by
means of a redundant physical energy scarcely compatible with the
full development of the intellectual powers of man. Central Africa is
a region distinguished from all others, by its productions and
climate, by the simplicity and yet barbarian magnificence of its
states; by the mildness and yet diabolical ferocity of its
inhabitants, and peculiarly by the darker nature of its
superstitions, and its magical rites, which have struck with awe
strangers in all ages, and which present something inexplicable and
even appalling to enlightened Europeans; the evil principle here
seems to reign with less of limitation, and in recesses inaccessible
to white men, still to enchant and delude the natives. The common and
characteristic mark of their superstition, is the system of Fetiches,
by which an individual appropriates to himself some casual object as
divine, and which, with respect to himself, by this process, becomes
deified, and exercises a peculiar fatality over his fortune. The
barbarism of Africa, may be attributed in part its great fertility,
which enables its inhabitants to live without are but chiefly to its
imperviousness to strangers. Every petty state is so surrounded with
natural barriers, that it is isolated from the rest, and though it
may be overrun and wasted, and part of its inhabitants carried into
captivity, it has never been made to form a constituent part of one
large consolidated empire and thus smaller states become dependent,
without being incorporated. The whole region is still more
inaccessible on a grand scale, than the petty states are in
miniature; and while the rest of the earth has become common, from
the frequency of visitors, Africa still retains part of the mystery,
which hung over the primitive and untrodden world.
Passing over the attempts of the very early travellers to become
acquainted with the geographical portion of Africa, in which much
fiction, and little truth, were blended, we arrive at that period,
when the spirit of discovery began to manifest itself amongst some of
the European states. The darkness and lethargy, which characterised
the middle ages, had cast their baneful influence over every project,
which had discovery for its aim, and even the invaluable discovery of
the mariner's compass, which took place at the commencement of the
thirteenth century, and which opened to man the dominion of the sea,
and put him in full possession of the earth had little immediate
effect in emboldening navigators to venture into unfrequented seas.
At a somewhat earlier period, it is true, the Hanse Towns and the
Italian republics began to cultivate manufactures and commerce, and
to lay the foundation of a still higher prosperity, but they carried
on chiefly an inland or coasting trade. The naval efforts, even of
Venice or Genoa, had no further aim than to bring from Alexandria,
and the shores of the Black Sea, the commodities of India, which had
been conveyed thither chiefly by caravans over land.
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