ATLANTIDÆ.
DIVISIONS.
- A.—The Negro Atlantidæ.
- B.—The Kaffre Atlantidæ.
- C.—The Hottentot Atlantidæ.
- D.—The Nilotic Atlantidæ.
- E.—Amazirg—Atlantidæ.
- F.—The Ægyptian Atlantidæ.
- G.—The Semitic Atlantidæ.
In respect to the general phænomena of ethnological distribution, we are now fully prepared for all that will be presented in Africa. Large areas covered by single nations, and small ones parcelled out amongst many, are what we have already seen both in Asia and America. The influences of a climate, at once tropical and continental, we shall find at their maximum; those of extended river-systems, and of mountain-ranges of the first magnitude, being less important. So also is the influence of the ocean; the insular system of Africa being the smallest in the world, and the African sea-board being the one least indented.
From the greater heat of climate, the steppes of High Asia become sandy deserts in Africa: whilst the central portion of the continent where the highest table-land is to be expected, has yet to be explored.
Still the effect of a high level above the sea as manifested (for instance) in Abyssinia, is to be taken into our consideration of the physical conditions of Africa, i.e. as a condition that, to a certain degree, in certain cases, counteracts the effects of excessive heat. On the other hand, alluvial tracts, like the valleys of the Nile and Niger are to be placed in the opposite scale, as assistant to the influences of a tropical and equatorial sun.
The region, however, of the Atlantidæ is not Africa alone; it is Africa and something else—Africa plus the African side of Asia, i.e. Syria and Arabia; and here, in attending to the African character of the latter of these two areas, we must not lose sight of their physical relations to the sterile table-land of Persia, and the true steppe-country of Turkestan and Mongolia; for such is the line of continuity, in the way of steppes or desert, from Sahara to Siberia.
Strictly adhering to the order of the supposed affinities, it would be proper to take the Atlantidæ of Asia first; in which case we should begin with the Arab and Jew, and proceed with the Ægyptian, the Berber, and Abyssinian, when the arrangement would be strictly natural.