THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE
OWING to the absence of inlets, gulfs, and great estuaries, Africa has been the last of the continents to yield to the advances of civilization. Its interior is therefore less known than any other part of the tropical world, excepting perhaps the centre of Australia; but what is known of it shows that it is not destitute of those grand and varied features which characterize the western tropics. Tropical Africa extends from the middle of the Sahara in the north to the plains of the Bushmen in the south. Chief among the natural features of this wide area are the great lakes lying across the Equator, which most probably constitute the highest sources of the Nile. The Nile itself, which rivals the Amazon in the length of its course, is a tropical river; and it is one of the wonders of the world. Three other great rivers belong to tropical Africa;-the Niger in the north; the Congo in the west; and in the souththe Zambeze, on which is the highest waterfall in the world.
The interior of Africa-so far from being a desolate waste, as was at one time supposed-is a well watered and fertile region, and is remarkable for the extraordinary dimensions both of its vegetable and of its animal life. The chief of its vegetable wonders is the baobab-tree, which has been well called the elephant of the vegetable world. One baobab has been seen whose trunk was thirty feet in diameter and ninety- five in circumference. As these trees are generally hollow, they are frequently made use of as dwellings or stables; and Dr. Livingstone mentions one in which twenty or thirty men could lie down and sleep as in a hut! There are also gigantic sycamores, under whose branches the negroes pitch their huts;while picturesque-looking mangrovesare found flinging theshores of the sea and the mouths of rivers.
To the presence of mangrove trees must be attributed, in part at least, the unhealthy character of the estuaries of African rivers. From the roots, when left bare by the tide, a sickly odour arises; and the vicinity of a mangrove forest is always exposed to the deadly malaria. "The shore," says Kingsley, describing a mangrove forest, "sank suddenly into a low line of mangrove wood, backed by primeval forest. The loathsome floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath. Upon the endless web of inter-arching roots great purple crabs were crawling up and down. The black bank of dingy leathern leaves above; the endless labyrinth of stones and withes (for every bough had lowered itsown living cord, to take fresh hold of the foul soil below); the web of roots, which stretched far away inland;complicated trap for the voyager: there was no opening, no relief- nothing and here and there an isolated group of large,THE MANGROVEand children, bending and spreading, as if in hideous haste to choke out air and sky. Wailing sadly, sad-coloured mangrove- hens ran off across the mud into the dreary dark. The hoarse night-raven, hid among the roots, startled the voyager with a sudden shout, and then all was again silent as the grave."In the rivers of Africa the terrible crocodile takes the placeheld by the alligator③ in America, There also we encounter the hippopotamus④ and the still more frightful rhinoceros.⑤ Herds of elephants may be seen winding through the open plains, swimming across the rivers in majestic lines and with elevated trunks, or bathing in the shallow lakes for coolness or protection against insects. The antelope (of which Africa is the special nursery), the giraffe, the buffalo, the zebra, are all found in abundance in the plains of southern and central Africa, from Orange river in the south to the Senegal and Nubia in the north.
The African desert produces only a few plants and animals; but it stamps them all with its own peculiar mark. From the tawny Bedouin to the worm scarcely distinguishable in the sand, it gives all its creatures the same dress-the same colour, which might justly be called the colour of the desert. It is the pale grayish-yellow tint which belongs as well to the gazelle as to the small lark of the sandy wastes. Among the birds there are no doubt many modifications of this general rule, and the deviations increase as the desert gradually merges into the more fertile steppes, but even here its characteristic mark is not to be mistaken.
When we consider the scanty vegetation of the Sahara, we cannot wonder that animal life is but sparingly scattered over its surface. The lion, so frequently misnamed "The king of the desert," only shows himself on its borders. As lions cannot exist without flesh and water, they avoid the sandy desert. In fact, they never leave the wooded mountains of the Atlas, or the fruitful plains of the Soudan, to wander far into the Sahara. There snakes and scorpions are the only dangerous animals to be met with.
According to the seasons, animal life fluctuates in the Sahara from north to south. In winter and spring, when heavy rains, falling on its northern borders, provide wide districts, thoroughly parched by the summer heat, with the water andpasturage needed for the herds, the nomadic tribes wander farther into the desert with their camels, horses, sheep, and goats, and retreat again to the coast-lands as the sun gains power. At that time of the year the wild animals-the lion, the gazelle, and the antelope-also wander farther to the south, which then provides them, each according to its taste, with the nourishment which the dry summer is unable to bestow. The ostrich, too, which during the summer ranged farther to the north, then retreats to the south; for hot and sandy plains are the paradise in which this singular bird delights to roam.