that continent. Nature seems to rejoice in unfolding her strength through the seeds deposited in the soil. “Some fifty and some an hundred fold” is the law of increase, when the least care is given to planting and cultivation. Maize produces two crops a year. Tree life is gigantic, and the variety of wood infinite. Of the picturesque trees, the boabab, or monkey bread-fruit tree, whose crown of green sometimes forms a circle of over 100 feet, takes a front rank, followed by the ceiba, with its stem of 60 feet and its rich crown of foliage extending fully 60 feet further.
THE “DEVIL OF THE ROAD” AND OTHER AFRICAN WASPS, WITH CATERPILLAR NESTS.
BUSH-BUCKS OF RIVER CHOBE.
All of torrid Africa revels in plants and fruits of the most nutritious and medicinal quality, suited to the wants and well-being of the people. There is both food and medicine in the fruits of the palm, banana, orange, shaddock, pine-apple, tamarind, and the leaves and juice of the boabab. The butter-tree gives not only butter, but a fine medicine. The ground-nut yields in six weeks from the planting. The natives produce for eating, wheat, corn, rice, barley, millet, yams, lotus berries, gum, dates, figs, sugar, and various spices, and for drink, coffee, palm-wine, cocoanut milk and Cape wine. No less than five kinds of pepper are known, and the best indigo is produced, along with other valuable dyes. Cotton, hemp and flax are raised for clothing.
It has always been a fiction that Africa contained more gold than any other continent. The “gold coast” was a temptation to venturesome pioneers for a long time. Precisely how rich in minerals the “dark continent” is, remains to be proved. But it is known that iron abounds in many places, that saltpetre and emery exist in paying quantities, that amber is found on the coasts, and that diamonds are plenty in the Kimberly region. That the continent is rich in useful minerals may be taken for granted, but as these things are not perceptible to the naked eye, time must bring the proof.
Various estimates have been put upon the population of Africa. Stanley estimated the population of the Congo basin at 50,000,000. The Barbary States we know are very populous. Africa has in all probability contributed twenty-five millions of slaves to other countries within two-hundred and fifty years without apparent diminution of her own population.
So she must be not only very populous but very prolific. It would be safe to estimate her people at 200,000,000, counting the Ethiopic or true African race, and the Caucasian types, which embrace the Nubians, Abyssinians, Copts and Arabs. The Arabs are not aborigines, yet have forced themselves, with their religion, into all of Northern and Central Africa, and their language is the leading one wherever they have obtained a foot-hold. The Berber and Shelluh tongues are used in the Barbary States. The Mandingo speech is heard from the Senegal to the Joliba. On the southwestern coast there is a mixture of Portuguese. Among the true natives the languages spoken are as numerous as the tribes themselves. In the Sahara alone there are no less than forty-three dialects. Mr. Guinness, of London, president of the English Baptist Missionary Society operating in Africa, says there are 600 languages spoken in Africa, belonging principally to the great Soudanese group.