Stanley's Story; Or, Through the Wilds of Africa / A Thrilling Narrative of His Remarkable Adventures, Terrible Experiences, Wonderful Discoveries and Amazing Achievements in the Dark Continent

by Col. A. G. Feather

AN OBJECT OF INTENSE INTEREST.

The Desert of Sahara presents some interesting facts of the same nature. It has already been stated that this part of Africa was ocean within a comparatively recent geological period. Tristram and several French officers of scientific attainments, who have made geological examinations of large portions of the desert have shown that the northern margin is lined with ancient sea-beaches and lines of terraces—the “rock-bound coasts” of the old ocean. Numerous salt-lakes exist in the desert which are tenanted by the common cockle. A species of Haligenes which inhabits the Gulf of Guinea is found in a salt lake in latitude 30 deg. north and longitude 7 deg. east, separated, therefore, from its present marine habitat by the whole extent of the great desert, and the vast expanse of Soudan and Guinea. Geologists hence conclude that the existing fauna, including man, occupied Africa long before the Sahara became dry land. Reference has been made in the preceding chapter to the supposed remarkably beneficent effect this great expanse of desert, heated sands, and hot air, has upon the climate, and consequently upon the civilization of Europe.

It is probable that from the fact that Sahara was about the last extensive portion of earth to be abandoned by the ocean, that the general opinion became prevalent that the continent of Africa was, geologically, the most recent of the grand divisions of the earth. Though supposed to be the oldest in civilization, it has been supposed to be the youngest in geological constitution. I am informed by scientific men that on account of recent investigations and reasonings, the opinion has for some time been gaining ground that Africa is likely to be shown to be the oldest part of the globe in both respects, and to have been the original birthplace of the race of man.

The negroid race, comprehending the Negroes, Hottentots, and Algutos, are, it is claimed by many scientists, the most ancient of all the types of mankind, and since their appearance on earth vast geographical changes have taken place. Continents have become ocean and sea has become land. “The negroes,” says Lubbock, “are essentially a non-navigating race, they build no ships, and even the canoes of the Feejeeans are evidently copied from those of the Polynesians. Now what is the geographical distribution of the race? They occupy all Africa south of Sahara, which neither they nor the rest of the true African fauna have ever crossed. And though they do not occur in Arabia, Persia, Hindoostan, Siam, or China, we find them in Madagascar, and in the Andaman Islands; not in Java, Sumatra, or Borneo, but in the Malay Peninsula, in the Phillippine Islands, New Guinea, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, the Feejee Islands, and in Tasmania. This remarkable distribution is perhaps most easily explicable on the hypothesis that since the negroid race came into existence there must have been an immense tract of land or a chain of islands stretching from the eastern coast of Africa right across the Indian ocean; and secondly that the sea then occupied the area of the present great desert. In whatever manner, however, these facts are to be explained, they certainly indicate that the race is one of very great antiquity.” “It is manifest,” says Baldwin in his Pre-Historic Nations, “that Africa at a remote period was the theatre of great movements and mixtures of peoples and races, and that its interior countries had then a closer connection with the great civilizations of the world than at any time during the period called historical.” It is the opinion of this writer that the Cushite race—the Ethiopians of Scripture—appeared first in the work of civilization, and that in remote antiquity that people exerted a mighty and wide-spread influence in human affairs, whose traces are still visible from farther India to Norway. Nor is he by any means alone in the opinion that the Carthagenians, ages ago, sent their ships across the Atlantic to the American continent. The Cushites, or original Ethiopians originated in Arabia, but their descendents are still found in northern Africa from Egypt to Morocco. Of this race are the Tuariks, the robbers of the Great Desert, to this day among the most magnificent specimens of physical man to be found anywhere on the globe.

The final solution of these problems of the geological status of Africa, and the great antiquity of man can but be of the greatest interest to all thoughtful persons. Unquestionably their solution will be greatly hastened, should Dr. Livingstone succeed in the great enterprise upon which he is now engaged, and soon make known to the world the true sources of the Nile. His success therein would stimulate endeavor, study, exploration, and, it is to be hoped, comprehensive and systematic surveys of a continent the evidences of whose civilization in remote ages lie buried among the debris of countless centuries.

We know, from the imperfect investigations which have already been made, that cities have been engulfed in the sands of Sahara. We know that vast changes have taken place in the physical structure of the continent of Africa and of the world since the negro race first appeared. It is not improbable, therefore, that where for so many ages beasts of prey and savage tribes have occupied a land oppressed with heat and burdened with many ills, there may yet be found evidences of former civilization and power in greatest possible contrast to present barbarism and national weakness. And who shall say that when the face of the continent was changed, whether by a great convulsion or by a gradual process, some of the people did not migrate northward, cross the Mediterranean and populate the continent which has since become the abode of the highest civilization and the greatest intellectual culture? Who shall say that these races of remote antiquity were not possessed of culture and arts and literature placing them very high in the scale of civilization? Within the historic period those nations have passed away which were the acknowledged parents of modern culture and art. The power and versatility of the human mind, reason, eloquence, and poetry, were most sublimely illustrated by the Greeks, whose works still remain to benefit and instruct mankind. Yet the freedom and power of this wonderful people have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated. The people, in the eloquent diction of Macaulay, have degenerated into timid slaves; the language into a barbarous jargon; and the beautiful temples of Athens “have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen.” The vast empire of Rome has passed entirely away within a few centuries. She had herself annihilated Carthage leaving nothing, as we have seen, of the arts, literature, or institutions of a people whose ships had sailed on every wave from the Hellespont to the Baltic, and, not improbably, from the Mediterranean to the delta of the Mississippi. Other great nations are also known to have passed away or been destroyed, the nature of their civilization and institutions being left to conjecture based upon a few monuments or a few literary remains preserved by foreign writers. It being once established that man existed ages before what is commonly called the beginning of the historic period it would be simply logical, considering many national destructions which have occurred during the historic period, to conclude by analogy that races of remote antiquity flourished and passed away leaving no sign, which has been yet discovered, of their power and civilization. It is evident the historian Macaulay thinks it not improbable such may be the fate of England, and he expressly states in a well-known passage that the time may come when only a single naked fisherman may be seen in the river of the ten thousand masts. It is difficult, if not impossible, for mankind entirely to overcome the tendency to decay.

ARAB SLAVE TRADERS.

We shall presently see that Africa is a field upon which must soon be decided a great issue of politico-social importance; an issue which involves the abolition of polygamy, domestic slavery, and the suppression of the foreign slave trade. From what has gone before in this volume, it will have been seen that here, too, are likely to be most conclusively demonstrated the vast age of the world, the great antiquity of man, and the nature of his origin. In comparison of the settlement of this issue and the solution of these problems of science, even the discovery of the true sources of the Nile may be regarded as unimportant, except for the reason that Dr. Livingstone’s great achievement will arouse other men of science to similar sacrifices, labors, and fortitude. Thus Africa is found to present another remarkable contrast for our contemplation; for while civilization is there at a lower ebb than in any other grand division of the globe, the highest intellectual efforts of the most astute thinkers of the times are turning their best efforts thitherward, in the confident hope of greatly enlarging the sphere of human knowledge, and of extending the triumphs of science and civilization.

There are many, it is true, who imagine that the scientific inquiries which are being made in regard to the great age of the world, the races which existed long anterior to the historic period, and the origin of the human species are founded in a spirit of skepticism and hostility to Christian civilization, or, rather to Christianity as a religion. Doubtless there are many scientists who put no faith in Holy Writ, as much of it has been commonly understood. Others, and those among the most distinguished of men, are no less devout believers in Christianity than they are firm believers in the great age of the world and antiquity of man. The devotees of Christianity have in not a few instances mistaken an ally for an enemy. This was notably the fact, in an example which is here most appropriate, in the case of the modern origin of the science of astronomy. The Christian church, as then existing, pronounced as religious heresy the plain truth that the world moves, and that the sun neither rises nor sets, but is stationary—the sublime centre of a universe of planets and stars, and, perhaps, inhabited worlds, whose movements must be controlled, as the vast system must have been originated, by One of infinite wisdom and power and goodness. In due course of time it was discovered that astronomy did not militate against Christianity, and the church not only ceased putting astronomers in prison, but learned that the acceptance of all truth, come from whatever source it may, is a Christian duty. And many of the most distinguished astronomers have been no less earnest exemplars of the Christian system of religion than any monk who ever wore the pavements of a monastery and left the world no wiser or better than he found it.