Chapter M: Daguerre (11)

In the early part of 1819, he was selected to head an expedition, over land, from Hudson’s Bay, to the Arctic Ocean; and having embarked at Gravesend, on the 23d of May, arrived at the former place on the 30th of August; and, on the 9th of September, began to ascend the streams between York Factory and Cumberland House, a journey of six hundred and ninety miles, which he performed in about six weeks, having been nearly killed by an accident, which he thus relates:――‘In the afternoon, whilst on my way to superintend the operations of the men, I had the misfortune to slip from the summit of a rock into the river, betwixt two of the falls. My attempts to regain the bank were, for a time, ineffectual, owing to the rocks within my reach having been worn smooth by the action of the water; but, after I had been carried a considerable distance down the stream, I caught hold of a willow, by which I held until two gentlemen came in a boat to my assistance.’ From Cumberland House he proceeded along the snow, to Fort Chepywan, where he arrived on the 26th of March, 1820, after having walked eight hundred and fifty-seven miles, with a weight on his ancles, the whole distance, of nearly three pounds; and in the course of which, he describes the cold to have been so severe, that ‘the tea froze in the tin pots before it could be raised to the mouth, and even a mixture of spirits and water became thick by congelation.’ On the 29th of July, he arrived at Fort Providence, whence he proceeded to the Yellow Knife River, and directed his course towards the Polar Sea, through a country never before visited by a European; wintering, on his way thither, at Fort Enterprise, near the head of the Copper Mine River, where he remained, in a hut built by the Canadians, till the end of June, 1821; during which time, he wrote great part of his journal, and in which year he was made a commander.

On the 7th of July, he reached the westerly part of the Copper Mine River; a few days afterwards, traversed the Copper Mountains, and pitching his tent beneath them, sent forward in advance, his two Esquimaux interpreters, to inform their countrymen of his approach, and of the object of his expedition. After reconnoitering the mouth of the Copper Mine River, and giving to one of the neighboring promontories the name of Cape Hearne, he embarked in a canoe, on the 21st of July, and ‘commenced the navigation of the Arctic Ocean, with a voyage before him of not less than one thousand two hundred geographical miles; Fort Churchill, on the western shore of Hudson’s Bay, being the nearest spot at which he could hope to meet with a civilized being.’ The tempestuous weather, however, the shortness of his provisions, and the fears of the Canadians, who were unwilling to proceed further, compelled him to land at Cape Flinders. Hence he proceeded along the coast to Point Turnagain, now called the Duke of York’s Archipelago; and having carried his researches so far as ‘to favor the opinion of those who contend for the practicability of a north-west passage,’ he, on the 25th of August, terminated his survey of the coast, at the mouth of Hood’s River, where he left, in a box, an account of his proceedings, for the information of Captain Parry, who was then exploring the Arctic Sea in an easterly direction.

On the 31st of August, Captain Franklin, having broken up his canoes to make smaller ones, commenced his return to Fort Chepywan, where he arrived in July, 1822, after one of the most appalling and disastrous journeys ever recorded. During the time it occupied, his principal food was tripe de roche, leather, and boiled bones; three of his companions died of cold and hunger, and two were murdered, and devoured unconsciously by the remainder. The nights, in addition to the danger attending them from the frequency of the wolves, were so chilly, that the tents of himself and his party were, every morning, surrounded with snow to the height of three or four feet; and the blankets that covered their bed so hardened with frost that it was with difficulty they could be folded. Several times Captain Franklin fainted from fatigue, and the ice on which he kept continually falling, prevented him from traveling at the rate of more than two or three miles per day; often had he to wade up to his waist through water, where the temperature was scarcely above the freezing point; and, on one occasion, he was upset in his canoe, and only prevented, by clinging to a rock, from being dashed to pieces in the cataracts of the rapids. The following extract from his journal, will give some idea of the sufferings he endured:――‘A partridge being shot, the feathers were torn off, it was held to the fire a few minutes, and then divided into six portions. I and my companions ravenously devoured our shares, as it was the first morsel of flesh either of us had tasted for thirty-one days; unless, indeed, the small gristly particles which we found occasionally adhering to the pounded bones may be termed flesh.’ The delivery of Captain Franklin and his party from the death with which hunger, fatigue, and disease daily threatened them, was owing to the assistance of some Indian hunters, who came to them in their last stage of despair. ‘They treated us,’ says the captain, ‘with the utmost tenderness, gave us their snow-shoes, and walked without any themselves, keeping by our sides that they might lift us when we fell. They prepared our encampment, cooked for us, and fed us as if we had been children: evincing humanity that would have done honor to the most civilized people.’

On his arrival in England, Captain Franklin was made a post-captain; he married, in August, 1823, the daughter of William Penden, Esq., architect of the king’s stables at Brighton; and, at the end of the same year, submitted to Lord Bathurst ‘a plan for an expedition over-land to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and thence, by sea, to the north-western extremity of America; with the combined object, also, of surveying the coast between the Mackenzie and Copper Mine Rivers;’ an expedition which he was permitted to superintend, upon his showing to government, that ‘in the proposed course, similar dangers to those of the former over-land expedition were not to be apprehended.’

Accordingly, on the 16th of February, 1825, he embarked at Liverpool, having undergone ‘a severe struggle between the feelings of affection and a sense of duty,’ in taking leave of his wife, whose death, then hourly expected, took place six days after his departure. On the 29th of June, he arrived at the Methye River, and, in the following August, at the left bank of the Mackenzie, whence he proceeded to the mouth of that river, and, shortly after, found salt water; in commemoration of which, he landed on an island which he had discovered, and hoisted on a pole a silk union-jack, sewed and given him by his wife, ‘under the express injunction that it was not to be unfurled before the expedition reached the sea.’ On leaving this island, which he called Garry’s, and where he had deposited, beneath a signal-pole, a letter for Captain Parry, he commenced his ascent of the Great Bear Lake River, on the banks of which he remained till the summer of 1826, when, in spite of many dangers and obstacles, he proceeded to about half-way between Mackenzie River and Icy Cape, in latitude 70 deg. 26 min. N., and longitude 148 deg. 52 min. W.; at which point he calculated he could not with safety proceed further. His feelings at being compelled to return, he thus expresses in his journal: ‘It was with no ordinary pain that I could now bring myself even to think of relinquishing the great object of my ambition, and of disappointing the flattering confidence that had been reposed in my exertions. But I had higher duties to perform than the gratification of my own feelings; and a mature consideration of all things, forced me to the conclusion that we had reached that point, beyond which perseverance would be rashness, and the best efforts must be fruitless.’

On the 1st of September, 1827, Captain Franklin arrived at Liverpool, from New York, where he had received every mark of attention both public and private; and, in the same year, he was presented by the Geographical Society of Paris, with their annual gold medal, value twelve hundred francs, and also elected a corresponding member of that institution. In November, 1828, he married a second time; in the following year had the honor of knighthood conferred upon him, and also the degree of D. C. L. by the University of Oxford; and, in 1830, he was appointed commander of the Rainbow. In both expeditions to the Arctic Sea, Captain Franklin was accompanied by Dr. Richardson, a journal of whose discoveries is appended to the former’s second narrative, which, as well as that containing an account of his first voyage, combines the most intense interest with the most valuable information, and is written with great spirit, elegance, and accuracy. In the course of his perilous journey, by sea and land, Captain Franklin evinced a contempt of personal danger in the pursuit of his enterprise, and a degree of kind-heartedness to, and consideration for, those who accompanied him, that has rendered him equally the pride of his friends, and an honor to his country.

On the 19th of May, 1845, Sir John sailed from England in search of the North West Passage. He had two vessels, the Erebus and Terror; the crews, officers, and men numbered one hundred and thirty-eight. On the 26th of July, sixty-eight days afterwards, they were seen by a whale ship, moored to an iceberg near the centre of Baffin’s Bay. No special anxiety was entertained respecting them until the beginning of 1848, for Franklin had intimated that the voyage would probably continue for three years, and that they might be the first to announce their own return. But as month after month passed away without any tidings, an anxious and painful sympathy sprung up in the public mind, and the British government determined that a search for the missing vessels should be made, in three different quarters, by three separate expeditions fitted out for that purpose.

One quarter, the region known as Boothia, was beyond the scope of these expeditions, and Lady Franklin determined to organize an expedition to explore that region. She appropriated all the means under her control, and a subscription supplied the deficiency. The Prince Albert, a vessel of ninety tons burthen, was fitted out at Aberdeen, and Captain Forsyth, of the Royal Navy, offered his gratuitous services as commander. At about the same time, Mr. Henry Grinnell, a wealthy merchant of New York, fitted out, at his own cost, two vessels,――the Advance and the Rescue,――and dispatched them to the Arctic Seas to aid in the search for Sir John. An exceedingly interesting narrative of the voyage has been published by Dr. Kane, the surgeon, naturalist and journalist of the expedition.

Time passed on, and all the vessels of the various expeditions returned to port without any tidings of the lost ones. In May, 1853, Mr. Grinnell again fitted out the Advance for the purpose of continuing the search, if necessary, for two years. She had a company of seventeen persons, under the command of Dr. Kane. She has been absent for over two years, and fears are entertained for the safety of her noble commander and his brave companions.

Subsequent to the departure of the Advance, the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew was ascertained. They had perished of hunger and hardships, in attempting to reach the settlements of the Hudson’s Bay Company, by an overland journey from the Arctic Seas. Relics of the ill-starred voyagers were discovered by some agents of the company in the possession of the Esquimaux Indians. These relics consisted of philosophical instruments, watches, rings, spoons, etc., bearing the initials of Sir John and his companions. These had been picked up by the Indians at the place where the navigators had so miserably perished.

TRAVELS IN AFRICA.――PARK, DENHAM, CLAPPERTON, LANDER, AND OTHERS.

The vast continent of Africa, measuring 5000 miles in length, and about 4700 in its greatest breadth, and the area of which is calculated at 12,000,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the entire land area of the globe, has presented greater obstacles to human enterprise than any other equal portion of the earth’s surface. The peculiar physical condition of Africa has operated as one cause of her isolation from the rest of the world. The other portions of our earth situated under the tropics consist generally either of sea, or of narrow peninsular tracts of land, the clusters of islands blown upon the sea-breeze. Africa, on the other hand, presents scarcely one gulf or sea-break in its vast outline. A consequence of this compact geographical shape of a continent, the greater part of which is within the torrid zone, is its subjection, throughout its entire extent, to the unmitigated influence of the sun’s heat. All that is noxious in climate we are accustomed to associate with Africa. Here stretching out into a boundless desert, where for days the traveler toils amid burning sands under a stifling sky――there covered with dense and swampy jungle, breathing out pestilence, and teeming with all the repulsive forms of animal life, the African continent seems to defy the encroachments of European civilization. And although, probably, our ideas of these African horrors will be modified by more accurate knowledge, enough seems ascertained to prove that the lying open of interior Africa to the general flood of human influence will be among the last achievements of the exploring spirit of our race.

Notwithstanding the difficulties which lie in the way, Africa has at all times been an object of curiosity and interest to the inhabitants of the civilized parts of the earth; and scientific zeal, the desire of extending traffic, and even the mere thirst for adventure, have prompted many expeditions for the purpose of exploring its coast and making discoveries in its interior. The ancients appear to have acquired much knowledge of Africa, which was afterwards lost, and had to be reacquired by the moderns for themselves. The African coasts of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were not only familiar to the ancient geographers, but were inhabited by populations which performed a conspicuous part in the general affairs of the world, and ranked high in the scale of civilization――the Egyptians, Carthaginians, etc. Nor, if we may believe the evidence which exists in favor of the accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa by ancient navigators, were the other coasts of the continent――those, namely, which were washed by the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean――unvisited by northern ships. Regarding the interior of Africa, too, the knowledge possessed by the ancients, although very meagre in itself, was nearly as definite as that possessed by their modern descendants, until within a comparatively recent period. As far as the northern borders of the Great Desert, their own personal observation might be said to extend; and respecting the wandering tribes of black and savage people living farther to the south, they had received many vague notices. The Nile being one of the best-known rivers of the ancient world, its origin and course were matters of great interest, and the African geography of the ancients, in general, may be said to consist of speculations respecting this extraordinary river. The first mention made of the other great African river, the Niger, is by Ptolemy, who lived seventy years after Christ. Ptolemy believed that this river discharged itself ultimately into the Nile; others, however, did not admit this conclusion, and acknowledged that the real course of the Niger was a mystery.

Such are some of the more prominent points in the ancient geography of Africa. How wild and inacurate must have been the notion entertained respecting the shape and total extent of the African continent, may be judged from the fact, that one geographer describes it as an irregular figure of four sides, the south side running nearly parallel to the equator, but considerably to the north of it! Others, again, held forth the fearful picture of Central Africa as a vast burning plain, in which no green thing grew, and into which no living being could penetrate; and this hypothesis of an uninhabitable torrid zone became at length the generally received one.

The invasion of Africa by the Arab races in the seventh century wrought a great change in the condition of the northern half of that continent. Founding powerful states along the Mediterranean coasts, these enterprising Mohammedans, or Moors, as they were called, were able, by means of the camel, to effect a passage across the Desert which had baffled the ancients, and to hold intercourse with the negroes who lived on its southern border along the banks of the Niger and the shores of Lake Tchad. In some of the negro states the Arabs obtained a preponderance, and with others they carried on an influential and lucrative commerce. The consequence was a mixture of Moorish and negro blood among the inhabitants of the countries of Central Africa bordering on the Great Desert, as well as a general diffusion of certain scraps of the Mohammedan religion among the negro tribes. Hence it is that, in the innermost recesses of interior Africa at the present day, we find the negroes partly professing Paganism, partly Mohammedanism, but all practicing ceremonies and superstitions in which we observe the Pagan spirit with a slight Mohammedan tincture.

It was not till the fifteenth century that the career of modern European discovery in Africa commenced. The Portuguese, leading the van of the nations of Europe in that great movement of maritime enterprise which constitutes so signal an epoch in the history of modern society, selected the western course of Africa as the most promising track along which to prosecute discovery; their intercourse with the Moors having made them aware that gold and other precious commodities were to be procured in that direction. In the year 1433, Cape Bojador was passed by a navigator called Gilianez; and others succeeding him, passed Cape Blanco, and, exploring the entire coast of the Desert, reached at length the fertile shores of Gambia and Guinea. The sudden bending inwards of the coast line at the Gulf of Guinea gave a new direction and a new impulse to the activity of the Portuguese. Having no definite ideas of the breadth of the African continent, they imagined that, by continuing their course eastward along the Gulf, they would arrive at the renowned country of the great Prester John, a fabulous personage, who was believed to reign with golden sway over an immense and rich territory, situated no one could tell where, but which some contended could be no other than Abyssinia. The Portuguese, while prosecuting their discoveries along the African coast, did not neglect means for establishing a commercial intercourse with those parts of the coast which they had already explored. Settlements or factories for the convenience of the trade in gold, ivory, gum, different kinds of timber, and eventually also in slaves, were founded at various points of the coast between Cape Verd and Biafra. Various missionary settlements were likewise founded for the dissemination of the Roman Catholic faith among the natives.

The chimera of Prester John was succeeded by the more rational hope of effecting a passage to India by the way of Southern Africa. This great feat, accordingly, was at length achieved by Vasco de Gama, who, in 1497, four years after the discovery of America by Columbus, persisted in his course to the south so far as to double the Cape of Good Hope, and point the way northward into the Indian Ocean. By his voyages and those of his successors, the eastern coast of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope through the Mozambique Channel to the Red Sea, was soon defined as accurately as the western coast had been by the voyages of his predecessors; and thus the entire outline and shape of the African continent were at length made known. This great service to science and to the human race was rendered, it ought to be remarked, by the Portuguese, who may be said to have conducted the enterprise of the circumnavigation of Africa from its beginning to its end; and this is perhaps the greatest contribution which the Portuguese, as a nation, have made to the general fund of human knowledge.

The outline of Africa having thus been laid down on the maps, and the extent of its surface ascertained, the attention of discoverers was next turned to its interior. The efforts made by the Portuguese to explore Nigritia in search of Prester John have been already alluded to; but it was by the other nations of Europe, especially the English, the French, and the Dutch, who, on the decline of the Portuguese power, began to compete with each other in this field of enterprise, that the greatest advances were made in the knowledge of geography of the various parts of Africa, and of the races which inhabit it. For these last two hundred years, discoverers and travelers of various nations have been adding to our information respecting this vast continent; and in consequence of their joint labors, some in one part, some in another, we are now able to form an idea, very general, it must, be admitted, but still tolerably distinct, of Africa and its inhabitants. In presenting a summary view of the progress of African discovery, from the period of the final circumnavigation of the continent, and its correct delineation in outline, down to the present time, it will be advantageous to take up its various divisions in the following order:――Western Africa, Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa or Nigritia, and Northern Africa, including the Great Desert.

WESTERN AFRICA.――The shores of Western Africa, especially those which border the Gulf of Guinea, have retained to the present time the distinction which they acquired at the period of their discovery by the Portuguese, of being the market which European ships visit for African commodities.

The Portuguese, as we have already mentioned, where the first to plant factories along this coast, from the southern termination of the Great Desert to Congo, and other maritime districts south of the equator. Allured by the profits of the slave trade, other European nations hastened to occupy stations on the same coast; and towards the end of the eighteenth century, the number of European forts and factories round the Gulf of Guinea were said to be forty in all; of which fifteen belonged to the Dutch, fourteen to the English, four to the Portuguese, four to the Danes, and three to the French. Deriving its principal commercial importance from the trade in negroes, which this chain of forts was intended to guard, Western Africa has, since the abolition of the slave trade, fallen considerably out of view. According to the best information, however, that has been obtained, ‘the territory is in the possession of a number of petty states, many of which compose aristocratic republics, turbulent, restless, licentious, and generally rendered more depraved by their intercourse with Europeans.’

Proceeding from north to south, let us briefly notice the various countries of the western coast, with the tribes which inhabit them. The most northerly is Senegambia, the name applied to the district watered by the two rivers Senegal and Gambia, commencing from the Desert, and extending as far as the Grain Coast. According to Mungo Park, this territory is inhabited by four tribes――the Feloops, the Jaloffs, the Foulahs, and the Mandingoes. In all these tribes, part are Mohammedans by profession; but the great body of the people are Pagans, called by their Mohammedan brethren Kafirs, or infidels, and practicing the Fetish form of worship; that is, the worship of inanimate objects. The Feloops were described by Park as a gloomy and revengeful race, but honorable and faithful in their dealings with friends; the Jaloffs as an active and warlike people, with jet-black skins, but among the most handsome of the negroes, divided into several principalities, and excelling in the manufacture of cotton cloth; The Foulahs――a race of more importance in Africa than Park imagined――as of a tawny complexion, with soft silky hair and pleasing features, much attached to a pastoral life; and the Mandingoes, who are by far the most numerous people in this part of Africa, as of a mild, sociable, and obliging disposition, the men commonly above the middle-size, well-shaped, strong, and capable of enduring great labor, the women good-natured, sprightly and agreeable.

The tract of country adjoining Senegambia on the south, and stretching along the Gulf of Guinea, from the Grain Coast to the Bight of Biafra, has been named Upper Guinea, and includes, besides the colonies of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory and Gold Coasts, so noted for their unhealthiness, three native states――namely, Ashantee, Dahomey, and Benin. Our information respecting these negro kingdoms is derived from the discoveries of various travelers, among whom may be mentioned Mr. Norris, who undertook a journey to the court of the king of Dahomey in 1772, with the hope of making arrangements beneficial to English trade; Mr. Bowditch, who took part in a mission for a similar purpose to the king of Ashantee in 1817; and Captain Adams, who visited Benin at a later period.

Ashantee is described as a hilly country, well watered by numerous streams, and covered almost entirely with that rich vegetable luxuriance, the labor of removing which, it has been observed, is as severe for the agriculturist as the opposite labor of fertilizing barren lands. The Ashantee negro clears the land by means of fire――thus both removing the rank vegetation, and spreading the soil with a rich manure, which yields two crops a year. Besides innumerable kinds of fruit and flowers, and all the giant trees of the tropics, the productions are sugar, tobacco, maize, rice, yams, and potatoes. All kinds of tropical animals likewise swarm in Ashantee. The human inhabitants of the whole region or empire are estimated at three millions, and though possessing, in a marked degree, some of the worst negro characteristics, they are, upon the whole, more advanced than most of the African tribes, not only practicing a regular and tolerably skilled agriculture, but showing considerable ingenuity in several mechanical arts――as dyeing, tanning, pottery, weaving, and the manufacture of instruments and ornaments out of gold, iron, etc. They are also cleanly, and well clad, and pay some attention to the building and decoration of their houses. Their government is an absolute monarchy, or nearly so; the classes of society under the monarch being cabocees or nobles, gentry, traders, and slaves. Polygamy is allowed, but no one but the king possesses many wives. The royal number of wives is said to be precisely 3333, who, however, act also in other capacities; as bodyguards, etc. The most horrible of the Ashantee customs is that of sacrificing a number of persons on the death of every man of rank, the number of victims being regarded not only as indicating the dignity of the deceased in this world, but as determining his rank in the next. The belief in a future state is one of the strongest of their religious ideas. Regarding the origin of mankind, they, as well as other negro tribes of the Guinea Coast, have the following singular tradition:――The Great Spirit, they say, having created three white men and women, and as many black, offered the blacks the first choice of two articles which he held in his hand, one of which was a calabash, the other a sealed paper. The blacks chose the calabash, which contained gold, iron, and all the choice products of the earth; in consequence of which the negro race to this day possess these blessings in abundance: while the sealed paper falling to the share of the whites, has conferred on them a higher gift of knowledge, wherewith the contents of the calabash may be turned to account. This admission of the superiority of the whites on the part of the Ashantees appears also in their belief that the good negroes become white in the future state. No part of Africa, or even of the world, is believed to be richer in gold than Ashantee.

The kingdom of Dahomey, situated eastward from Ashantee, resembles it in the general aspect of the soil, and in many other particulars. It appears to be a recent negro state, formed by the conquest of a number of tribes by a powerful race from the interior. The government of the Dahomans, like that of the Ashantees, is an absolute monarchy; but the Dahoman king seems to be still more despotic in practice than his Ashantee neighbor. When, in obedience to some superstitious freak, he wishes to send a message to some of his deceased relatives in the other world, he delivers the message to some attendant negro, whose head is immediately cut off, as a means of forwarding him to his destination; and if the monarch has forgot any part of his communication, he immediately adds a postscript by a second messenger. The bloody custom of sacrificing a number of victims on the occasion of a great man’s funeral is practiced at Dahomey as well as Ashantee. The Dahomans have similar religious beliefs with the Ashantees: their principal object of worship, appropriately enough, is the tiger. Of late years some improvement is said to have taken place in the habits of this fierce African race.

Passing from Upper Guinea, of which Ashantee and Dahomey are the principal territories, we come next to Lower or South Guinea, which extends from the Bight of Benin to the commencement of Southern Africa, and includes the provinces or districts of Loango, Congo, Angola and Benguela. The whole of this tract of coast presents the aspect of a country degraded and deteriorated by intercourse with Europeans, to a condition worse than its original negro barbarism. Here, more than three centuries ago, the Portuguese established themselves partly as missionaries of Christianity, and partly as traders in slaves; and while their efforts in the former capacity, directed as they are by the most absurd and wretched bigotry, produced almost no beneficial effect, the curse of the slave traffic which they imported has adhered to the country with a tenacity which all the rigors of modern philanthropy cannot overcome. It is from these coasts that the exportation of negroes is said to go on at the present time more busily than it did before the abolition of the slave trade. The characteristics of the coast, and of the population which inhabit it, are determined by the brutal traffic of which it is the scene. It is impossible, within our limits, to give a description of the whole line of shore, of the small port-towns scattered along it, with their motley population of negroes, mulattoes, and slave-dealing Portuguese; or of the negro districts in the interior, where the natives fight and kidnap each other to supply the demand for slaves on the coast.

SOUTHERN AFRICA. Occupied with their commerce on the coasts of Western Africa, the Portuguese scarcely give a thought to the southern extremity of the continent, the aspect of which was less promising; and accordingly, for a century and a half after the famous voyage of Vasco de Gama, the district round the cape of Good Hope remained a blank waste to Europeans. The prudent and enterprising Dutch, however, having embarked in the East India trade, soon discovered the importance of the cape as a commercial station, and in the year 1650 they founded Cape Town, the capital of Cape Colony, the most flourishing of all the European settlements in Africa. Encroaching, without the least scruple, on the territories of the natives, the Dutch extended their possessions so as to include an area of upwards of 120,000 square miles, some spots of which were cultivated and planted with vines, or laid out in corn-fields, but the greater part of which was converted into immense grazing farms. Under the Dutch the natives suffered dreadfully, numbers of them being reduced to bondage, and others driven into the interior to find subsistence as they best could. In 1795 the colony was taken by the English; it was again restored to the Dutch in 1800; a second time, however, it was taken by the English, to whom it was finally ceded in the year 1815, and is now, accordingly, an English possession. Both before and after the cession of Cape Colony to the British, various travelers have undertaken journeys among the tribes inhabiting this extremity of Africa; and no accounts are more full and interesting than those of the various missionaries, who, since the beginning of the present century, have employed themselves in the arduous task of carrying the doctrines of Christianity into the heart of the native tribes. The native tribes of Southern Africa are two in number――the Hottentots and the Caffres; the former, so far as not extirpated, inhabiting the tract of country adjacent to Cape Colony on the western coast, and the other the tract adjacent to the colony on the eastern coast.

Of the Hottentots of the colony and its vicinity, it is said that they have ‘become noted and almost proverbial for presenting man in his lowest estate, and under the closest alliance with the inferior orders of creation. It must, indeed, be admitted that they take particular pains to render their external appearance the most hideous that the human body can possibly present. Grease is poured over their persons in copious streams, which, being exposed to the perpetual action of smoke, forms on their skin a black and shining cake, through which the native color, a yellowish-brown, is scarcely perceptible. Grease in Africa forms the chief distinction of rank――the rich besmearing themselves with fresh butter, while the poorer classes are obliged to tear the fat from the bowels of slaughtered animals. They assign as a reason for this singular practice, an effect which has been readily admitted by judicious travelers――namely, that such a coating has, in this climate, a most salutary influence in defending them from the rays of the sun, and in averting many cutaneous disorders. Nature seems to have aided the task of disfiguring them, by covering the head with irregular tufts of hard and coarse hair, and causing singular prominences, composed of fat, to jut out in parts where they are least ornamental. Nor do their habits of life present anything to redeem this outward deformity. Their kraals or villages, consist of a confused crowd of little conical hovels, composed of twigs and earth, in which large families sit and sleep without having room to stand upright. The fire in the middle fills these mansions with thick smoke, the floors being deeply covered with every species of filth. At festivals, when an ox or a sheep is killed, the Hottentots rip open the belly, tear out the entrails, which they throw on the coals, and feast on them before the animal is completely dead. Yet they are a friendly, hospitable race, living together in the greatest affection and harmony. The sluggish and senseless stupidity with which they have been so generally taxed, seems to have been in a great measure produced by their degrading subjection to the Dutch boors.’ It has been asserted that the Hottentots are destitute of all ideas of religion; but this is not correct. It is ascertained that they believe in a Supreme Being, as well as in an inferior spirit of malignant nature; and that they practice certain superstitious rites, such as are usual among savages.

Such is the description given of the Hottentots as they were under the Dutch rule. Since the Cape came into the possession of the British, they have not been treated with the same neglect and cruelty as they experienced from the Dutch, who used to prohibit Hottentots, equally with dogs, from entering their places of worship; still, with some exceptions, arising from the beneficial effects produced in some places by the missionaries, the account seems to remain substantially true. Immediately to the north of the colony, and on the borders of the Snewburg or Snowy Mountains, are the Bosjesmans, or Bushmans, the most savage and degraded of all the South Africans. They were visited in 1797 by Mr. Barrow, private secretary to Lord Macartney, with the view of ascertaining whether friendly relations might not be entered into with them, to prevent their incursions upon the farms of the Europeans.

Mr. Barrow, at the same period, crossed the frontier which divides the colony from the country of the Caffres, and made acquaintance with this race, differing widely in almost all respects from their neighbors the Bushmans. He found them a handsome and spirited people, of frank and generous deportment, leading a roaming pastoral life, and possessing numbers of cattle, in the rearing of which they seemed proficient.

Before the commencement of the present century, little more was known respecting the original inhabitants of Southern Africa than what we have thus generally indicated. But in 1801, two gentlemen, Messrs. Trutter and Somerville, made an excursion to a considerable distance beyond the districts of the Bushmans and the Caffres, whom Mr. Barrow had visited, and discovered a large river, now called Orange River, flowing westward into the Atlantic. The banks of this river they found inhabited by a pastoral tribe called the Koranes; and the information they received from this people inducing them to continue their journey still farther to the north, they at last reached what not a little surprised them――a city or town of two or three thousand houses, very neatly built, and well-arranged. The name of this city was Lattakoo; and the accounts which the travelers brought back of it to the Cape, and of the friendliness with which they had been received by the Boshuanas, who were then the prevalent tribe, induced the government to send Dr. Cowan and Lieutenant Denovan to continue the discovery, and, if possible, make their way past Lattakoo, so as ultimately to reach Mozambique on the east coast. The issue of this expedition was unfortunate. The travelers reached Lattakoo in safety, but were killed at a distance of eleven days’ journey beyond it. The same route was afterwards pursued by Dr. Henry Lichtenstein, who added considerably to the knowledge then possessed of this part of Africa. But the most enterprising traveler in these regions was Mr. John Campbell, a missionary, who, animated with an eager desire to spread Christianity among the rude Hottentots and Caffres, undertook a journey for that purpose in 1813. He reached Lattakoo, made known the object of his visit to Mateebe, king of the Boshuanas, and, after some importunacy, obtained leave to establish a missionary station in the capital. Having succeeded in the object of his expedition, Mr. Campbell returned, but made a second journey to Lattakoo in 1820. He found the missionary establishment in active operation, but little progress had been made in converting the natives, who manifested the most profound indifference on the subject of religion. Mr. Campbell now penetrated beyond Lattakoo, and came among tribes till then unknown, some of them showing a considerable advance in the arts of life, inhabiting neat villages, cultivating the ground, smelting iron and copper, and manufacturing various implements. He also came upon the borders of an immense desert, which, from its appearance, and the information which he was enabled to collect respecting it, he thought entitled to be named the Southern Sahara, as rivaling in extent the Great Northern Desert. Whether, as he was led to imagine, this Desert stretches from the tropic of Capricorn, where he saw its extremity, to the equator, is a point which can only be settled by farther discovery; but the supposition does not appear probable.

Subsequently to Mr. Campbell’s journey, these regions have been visited by other travelers, who have made us better acquainted with the tribes of the South Cape, by giving us details of their customs and manner of life. The latest of these is Mr. Robert Moffat, likewise a missionary. The general conclusion, from the accounts of these various travelers, seems to be, that the southern extremity of Africa is inhabited by two principal races――the Hottentots, who, both physically and intellectually, are far inferior to the average of mankind; and the Caffres, a bold and savage, but promising race, resembling in their general features the natives of other parts of Africa, and divided into a number of tribes, who inhabit villages scattered through the country which borders on the Southern Desert.

While describing the inhabitants of Southern Africa, we have left the general features of the country itself undescribed. The following passage will supply the deficiency:――‘Southern Africa consists,’ says a writer, ‘of a most strange assemblage of mountains and plains, of spots lovely and picturesque beyond description, and gifted with inexhaustible fertility, and of seemingly boundless plains, where barrenness reigns so completely paramount, that the very principle of vegetation appears to be extinct. At a certain distance from the colony we enter upon regions over which the clouds of ignorance――almost the only clouds one meets with――-still brood. We traverse large rivers, which rise no one knows where, and envelop their exits in equal obscurity. Ranges of mountains also, with appellations uncouth, and hiding no one knows what treasures of the animal and vegetable kingdoms in their unvisited recesses, sweep before us along the verge of the horizon, dim, blue, and shadowy, like so many fragments of fairyland. And if the great outlines of the landscape be original and bold, the filling up and coloring are no less so. Everything upon which the eye rests has the appearance of having been cast in a mould nowhere else made use of in the system of nature. Among the terrestrial animals, what bulk and fantastic formations! How numerous and strikingly contrasted are the groups that present themselves! In their character and habits what extremes seem to meet! How unspeakably lavish seems to be the waste of vitality! Yet who will dare to say that, in this prodigious outpouring of animal life, there is a single creature that does not enjoy and adorn the scene on which it moves? If there be anything we should be disposed to think out of place, it is the stunted representatives of humanity, who, under the name of Bushmen, roam in indescribable misery and degradation over those sublime savannahs. To a man of imagination, nothing more inspiring can be conceived than climbing one of the breezy peaks overlooking that strange wilderness, at the moment that the dawn is busily unfolding all its varied features. From every tree the heavy dewdrops pour like rain; streams of white mist, smooth and glassy as a tranquil river, float slowly down the valleys, reflecting from their surface the trees, and cliffs, and crags on either hand. Here, through openings between feathery mimosas, weeping-willows, and tall trembling reeds, we catch a glimpse of some quiet lake, the haunt of the hippopotamus; while a herd of graceful purple antelopes are seen drinking on its further margin. There, amidst thick clumps of camel-thorn, we behold a drove of giraffes, with heads eighteen feet high, browsing on the tops of trees. Elsewhere, the rhinoceros pokes his long ugly snout from a brake; while the lion, fearless in the consciousness of his own strength, parades his tawny bulk over the plain, or reclines, in sphinx-like attitude, beneath some ancient tree.’

EASTERN AFRICA. With the exception of the countries bordering on the Red Sea――Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia――which cannot be included in so general a survey as the present, the eastern coast of Africa is undoubtedly the least-known portion of the whole circuit of the continent. The tract of country extending from the northern extremity of Caffreland to Cape Guardafui, and including the states or territories of Sofala, Mozambique, Zanguebar, and Ajan, was early visited by the Portuguese in their voyages to India; and in the course of the sixteenth century, various settlements were planted in it by them, similar to those which they planted along the Guinea Coast. The most conspicuous difference was, that here the ruling race were not pure negroes, but men of Arabic descent, and vehement Mohammedans. It was from these that the Portuguese wrested the immense line of coast-territory which they once held in this part of Africa, and of which they made Mozambique the capital. On the ruin of the Portuguese power in India, their settlements in Eastern Africa declined; the Arabs and blacks reconquered a great portion of their ancient territory; and it is now merely by sufferance that the once-powerful Portuguese retain a footing on the coast at all. What they do possess, however, they guard with the utmost jealousy; and they testify extreme aversion to the intrusion of any other European nation into those territories where they once lorded it so proudly. Mr. Salt, who visited Mozambique in 1808, found it to contain a population of less than three thousand, of whom only five hundred were Portuguese. ‘The rural population of this part of Africa,’ says Mr. Macculloch, ‘is in the most degraded state; and although the soil be naturally rich and productive, the culture of cotton, indigo, sugar, and other articles of commerce is wholly neglected. Rice, millet, and manioc are raised almost without labor, furnishing, with cocoa-nuts, almost the entire food of the slaves. The commerce of Mozambique has greatly decreased, in consequence of our exertions to suppress the traffic in slaves; but although much diminished, the slave trade is still carried on to a considerable extent both with Brazil and Arabia. These slaves, who are chiefly of the tribe of the Monjores, and brought from the centre of the continent, a distance of forty or forty-five days’ journey from the colony, are procured from the native merchants in exchange for salt, shells, tobacco, coarse cloths, etc. Goods costing about two dollars, will bring in, as far as the case may be, either a slave or an elephant’s tusk, weighing from sixty to eighty pounds of ivory. Hippopotamus’ tusks, gold dust, Columbo-root, gums, and amber, are the other chief exports.’

From these few particulars, which include nearly all that is known of this part of Africa, it will appear that, with the exception of the infusion of the Mohammedan and Arabic element, which is here very strong, it bears a close resemblance to the corresponding portion of the western coasts. There are at the same impediments, arising from climate, to the acquisition of much knowledge of the country by Europeans, who, at best, are unable to penetrate farther than a few miles into the interior. It appears probable, indeed, that the last portion of the coast of Africa to be thoroughly explored will be these sites of the declining Portuguese colonies.

CENTRAL AFRICA. Under the general name of Central Africa may be included the whole of the interior of the continent south of the Great Desert. This immense extent of country may be divided into two parts――Southern Central Africa, lying between the tropic of Capricorn and the equator; and Northern Central Africa, called also Souden, or Nigritia, lying between the equator and the Great Desert. The former is as yet totally unknown and unexplored; and before our information respecting it can be at all authentic and accurate, two most difficult expeditions must have been made, which have not yet been so much as proposed――one from the Cape of Good Hope northwards as far as the Mountains of the Moon, the other transversely across the continent from Congo to Zanguebar or Mozambique. At what future period the spirit of enterprise may achieve these two journeys it is impossible to tell.

Northern Central Africa, or Nigritia, has, on the other hand, been penetrated by travelers, who have advanced into it from all directions. From the earliest times this part of Africa attracted attention, as being the country through which the famous Niger flowed, on whose banks the great city of Timbuctoo, of the wealth of which vague accounts had reached the shores of the Mediterranean, was reputed to be situated. To ascertain the course of this river, and to reach this celebrated negro city, were the leading objects of all who engaged in the enterprise of African discovery. In the year 1618, an English company was formed for the purpose of opening up a communication with Timbuctoo, and not long afterwards a similar company was formed in France. For a century and a half the two nations continued to compete with each other in the enterprise: the English trying to make their way up the river Gambia, which they imagined to be the outlet of the Niger; the French, on the other hand, persevering along the Senegal, which seemed to them more likely to be identical with the Niger. Much useful information was acquired in these successive voyages respecting Western Africa; but no intelligence was obtained of the site of the great city of the negroes. It was clearly ascertained, however, that neither the Senegal nor the Gambia could be identical with the Niger, supposing the traditionary accounts of that river to be true. Three distinct opinions respecting this river began to be entertained. Some said that there was no Niger at all, such as the ancients had described it, but that some river, branching off into the Senegal and Gambia, was alluded to. Others believed that the ancient accounts of the Niger as a river flowing towards the east was-correct, and that it was to be considered one of the upper branches of the Nile. A third party maintained that the supposition of the Niger being identical with the Nile was untenable, considering the immense breadth of the continent, and that the true Niger was some stream rising in the interior of Africa, and flowing into the sea at some point of the western coast farther south than the Senegal and the Gambia. A subsequent modification of this opinion was, that the Niger did not flow into the sea at all, but terminated in some great marsh or lake in the interior of Africa, resembling the Caspian Sea.

Such was the state of information, or rather of doubt, with respect to the course of the Niger, when, in the year 1788, a number of spirited men of science, including Lord Rawdon, Sir Joseph Banks, the bishop of Landaff, Mr. Beaufoy, and Mr. Stuart, formed themselves into an association for the purpose of prosecuting this and other questions of African geography to an issue. No sooner had the society been formed, than it commenced its labors. The first travelers, however, whom it sent out were cut off by death. One of them, Major Houghton, ascended the Gambia, and never returned; it was afterwards ascertained that he had been killed by the Moors in the interior. It was at this juncture that the celebrated Mungo Park presented himself to the society. Born in the county of Selkirk, in Scotland, in the year 1771, and having been educated for the medical profession, Park had just returned from a voyage to the East Indies in the capacity of assistant-surgeon on board one of the East India Company’s vessels, when he offered his services to the association through Sir Joseph Banks. After due inquiry into Mr. Park’s character and qualifications, they were accepted. This was in 1793; but he did not depart on his expedition till the summer of 1795. His instructions were, on his arrival in Africa, ‘to pass on to the river Niger either by the way of Bambouk, or by such other route as should be found most convenient ――that he should ascertain the course, and, if possible, the rise and termination of that river――that he should use his utmost exertions to visit the principal towns or cities in its neighborhood, particularly Timbuctoo and Houssa――and that he should be afterwards at liberty to return to Europe either by the way of the Gambia, or by such other route as, under all the then existing circumstances of his situation and prospects, should appear to him to be most advisable.’