African Exploration and Travel

A WOMAN’S chance discovery in a pile of rubbish, a few years ago, of the official correspondence of a Pharaoh who lived a century before the Exodus has ail importance scarcely inferior to that of the Rosetta Stone. These letters, written in the Assyrian language and character, are all from the Asiatic portion of the Egyptian empire. The tributary king of Assyria and the governors of towns in Palestine, Phœnicia, and Asia Minor are the principal writers, and they report the condition of their various governments much the same as in more modern times.

This “ find ” has not only greatly extended our knowledge of Egyptian history and appreciation of the intellectual condition of that part of the world, and especially of the Canaanites, at that time, but it has wakened hopes that other heaps of rubbish may conceal other royal archives. It is not impossible that in some hidden collection of tablets, like that of Tell el Amarna, or of papyri, there may be an account of the bold explorers who discovered the gold mines of South Africa unknown ages ago. Still more likely is it that there will be some record of the pioneers who followed in the footsteps of these men and built Zimbabwi and the other mining towns and castles, the ruins of which are scattered over Mashonaland. A history of that great Sabaean colony, its origin, progress, and final downfall, — whether through the irresistible inrush of savage hordes, the far distant ancestors of the Kafir and the Zulu, or through the exhaustion of the gold, we cannot tell, — would necessarily prove of the greatest interest. It is more than probable, it is certain, that this episode of African history, as it apparently extended over centuries of time, contained more of romance, of exciting adventures, of hopes and fears, of gains and losses, than that of our modern California or Australia.

We can hope beside that records may he brought to light which will clear up the mysteries still clinging about the shadowy land of Punt, and the expedition sent out to explore it in the year B. C. 2400 by Sankhara of the Eleventh Dynasty, as we learn from the inscription in the Wady Hammamat. This region some scholars believe to be the still partly explored Galla and Somaliland, known also as the “ horn of Africa.” The discovery of the abandoned gold mines in the southern part of the continent seems to show that it was better known to the men of those distant ages, whose civilization, learning, and wealth we are now only beginning dimly to appreciate, than to those of any other time except our own. This may be true even if we accept the somewhat doubtful story of Herodotus of the fleet dispatched by Necho in the year B. C. 620, which returned to Egypt reporting that it had circumnavigated, the continent ; or the tales of the Carthaginian merchant travelers who are said to have crossed the Sahara and to have traded with the inhabitants of the Niger basin.

The exploration of Africa, which is yet in progress, may be said to have begun with the formation of the African Association in 1788. Up to that time, since the voyages initiated by Prince Henry the Navigator and those of Vasco da Gama, little had been done by any traveler, trader, or colonist except to touch here and there along the coast. Mungo Park was one of the pioneers of this association, and there are those still living, of whom the present writer is one, whose childish ideas of Africa were largely drawn from the rude pictures of this daring but ill-fated traveler whipping a pool to drive away the innumerable frogs that his horse might drink, or lying exhausted under a tree and receiving water from a compassionate negro woman.

Though there has been a continuous succession of travelers since his day, the most memorable period, and that which gave the greatest impetus to exploration, was the year 1849. It was in that year that Livingstone, in the first of his great journeys, reached the shores of Lake Ngami, a discovery which kindled in him the inextinguishable enthusiasm of the explorer, and caused him finally well-nigh to forget his original purpose of discovering new lands simply that they might be fields for missionary work. Notwithstanding his gradual sinking of the higher in the lower aim, however, no man has done more in our days to promote the work of christianizing the savage world. At the same time, a man of a very different stamp, Gordon Gumming, had just finished his five eventful years of hunting in South Africa, the fascinating account of which he published the next year. By this book he attracted a whole army of sportsmen and professional hunters, by whom and the “ trekking ” Boers the game which then swarmed on the plains and in the river bottoms was either exterminated, or else driven in greatly diminished numbers to the yet comparatively inaccessible Zambesi valley. On the east coast, in this same year, Mt. Kilimanjaro, superb with its two snow-clad peaks, was discovered by Dr. Rebmann, and hit. Kenia, snow-clad also, though directly under the equator, was seen by his fellowmissionary, Dr. Krapf. Their report of these wonders filled men’s imaginations, recalling the ancient traditions of the Mountains of the Moon at the source of the Nile, and reviving the interest of the civilized world in the solution of that mystery. In this same eventful year, also, Dr. Barth set out from the Mediterranean on his great journey of twelve thousand miles, lasting nearly seven years, during which he crossed and recrossed the desert, explored the central Sudan, and gave to us the greater part of the knowledge which we possess of those flourishing and populous negroid states to the south of the Sahara. From that time there has been a continually increasing host of travelers, missionaries, and adventurers who have penetrated into nearly every part of the continent. The map, which was mostly blank or conjectnrally drawn in our childhood, is now filled with lakes, rivers, mountain chains, plains, and deserts, while the political boundaries which mark the division between the different states and colonial possessions of the European powers show still more evidently the changes wrought by the last half century. The motives which have prompted this conquest of Africa have been various. On the west coast ihey have been mainly commercial since the first cargo of slaves was shipped to the New World. Undoubtedly there has been much missionary effort there, and Liberia and Sierra Leone both show what has been attempted for the development of the freedman ; but mercantile interests, the exchange of palm oil for gin, now that the slave trade has ceased, have been predominant. In the south, Livingstone, the devoted missionary and explorer, and Gordon Gumming, the ardent sportsman, were the men who were the leaders and examples of those who have opened up this region. On the east coast the missionary has been invariably the first in the field, while in the north commercial and political interests have mostly prevailed. The so-called “ partition of Africa,” which has occupied the public attention so much recently, is due largely to trade interests, though political motives have not been wanting. The great powers that have shared together the unappropriated parts of the continent have been actuated principally by a wish to open new markets for their own products as well as to secure and develop the trade and resources of the regions which have become their “ sphere of influence.” France and Italy, cramped by their European boundaries, have sought in Africa freedom to expand and a field for the activities of their young men, a nursery for soldiers and statesmen. Then mere jealousy, occasionally leading a nation to annex comparatively valueless territory to prevent a neighbor from taking it, has played a not unimportant part.

In all this opening up of Africa, however, whether it has proceeded from political. commercial, or in some cases, it must be confessed, from religious motives, the native himself has suffered grievously. The original inhabitants, if the pygmies represent them, as we are inclined to believe, linger only in the recesses of the great and inhospitable forests of the Congo and Aruwimi. The descendants of those who have driven this race to their last refuge are in their turn being crushed out by the raids of the slave hunters in equatorial Africa, or by the almost equally destructive advance of western civilization in other parts. To Livingstone it was the source of the bitterest regret that the slave raiders were the first to profit by his discoveries. The devastation caused by these enemies of the human race is almost inconceivable. There are regions of great extent, in the Congo Free State especially, which a few years ago were filled with a peaceful and industrious people, but are now uninhabited wildernesses. It is difficult to realize what damage an expedition of several hundred men almost necessarily does to a sparsely settled country poorly supplied with food. The expeditions, for instance, from the east coast to the interior, even when peaceful, literally “ eat up ” the country. But if the wretched native, in despair, attempts to defend his banana groves and wells, even from those who would pay for food and water, he suffers dearly for his act, and the result is often much the same as if he were attacked by a slave hunter.

The literature of this period of exploration and development, it is hardly necessary to say, has closely followed every movement. At first it consisted mainly of accounts of journeys into unknown regions. Now these are comparatively rare, and have given place to histories of countries, scientific treatises, government documents, missionary reports, and biographies of men who have given their lives to Africa. There are also works on the ethnography of the native races, their language and literature. But the largest class of writers are the travelers, neither explorers nor men with scientific aims, who simply describe the scenery and life of the countries through which they pass. A very favorable specimen of this class is the veteran Dr. H. M. Field. His latest work ¹ is an account of a few weeks spent in Northern Africa in the winter of 1892-93. It is written easily and pleasantly, and we judge from the frequent Scriptural allusions and illustrations that it was for a special audience. Though it contains nothing profound or original, yet Dr. Field is a good observer, and describes the picturesque life of the half-African, half-European towns on the Mediterranean exceedingly well.

He had unusual opportunities for meeting interesting people, both natives and foreigners, of which lie always availed himself for the benefit of his readers, and some of the most entertaining and suggestive passages in his book are accounts of interviews with leading men in the places he visited. The fact that this was his second journey to the region enables him to write somewhat more intelligently and to give more truthful impressions than the traveler to whom everything is new and strange. Of Gibraltar he tells nothing new, hut there is much that is of interest in his account of Tangier, almost the only place where Moor and Christian freely jostle each other in the streets. He had an interview with the bashaw, “ a magnificent specimen of manly strength and beauty,” who gave him the rare privilege of seeing the prison. The horrors of this place, where starvation is the only and continual discipline, are rather hinted at than described. There is a striking picture of the late Sultan, “ the only one in existence that gives any just impression of the man.” It is the enlargement of a photograph taken by a kodak while he was riding in the midst of a great procession, four years ago, in Tangier. A pleasant anecdote, showing his kindly feeling, is all that Dr. Field has to tell of him ; though he devotes a chapter to the relations which Morocco sustains to the European powers, and emphasizes the fact that because of its great and undeveloped resources in agricultural and mineral wealth “ it is the greatest prize in the world ” ! Of Algeria, naturally, he saw far more than of Morocco. Besides the capital he visited Constantine, and rode through the mountains of the Kabyles, of whom he gives a particularly interesting description, obtained from one who had lived long among them. He also went into the southern part of the colony to the edge of the Sahara. The impressions which he gives from what he saw and heard, as compared with those of his former visit, strengthen the conviction that the French, after sixty years of conquest, have done little or nothing to overcome the sleeping but ever living hostility of the natives. The prefect of Constantine said to him : “All is quiet now, but an insurrection may break out at any time. We cannot guard against it, nor even anticipate its coming, any more than that of an earthquake. . . . One thing we cannot do: we cannot touch the religion of the people. If we did, there would be an insurrection to-morrow ! ” Notwithstanding this feeling of living on a volcano, the Frenchman has come to stay, and he is planning to connect Algeria with Senegatnbia on the west coast and the states of the central Sudan by a railway, a magnificent scheme, to which Dr. Field devotes a chapter. There is nothing noteworthy in this, nor in his very sketchy account of his visit to Tunis and Carthage. This is the occasion of a diffuse and didactic chapter upon St. Augustine, which, we fear, will find fewer interested readers than his brief sketch of Jules Gérard, the lion-killer. This chapter and a dull recapitulation of the familiar events leading to the ruin of Carthage are perhaps the only instances of “padding” in a book which tells us much in an entertaining manner.

Of a very different character is Mr. Lucas’s history of the British colonies on the west coast.² It is packed full of information, clearly and concisely given, first of the general history of the discovery and settlement of the whole coast by the various European nations ; then each colony is described separately, its history, government, commerce, resources, and present condition. The general impression left by the book is not favorable. These colonies have been from the beginning, and still are, hardly more than mere trading settlements. Though the slave trade by sea has ceased, yet slavery itself, with its attendant barbarism, exists almost within cannon-shot of the towns and factories, and little is done to suppress it or to elevate the negro. The most satisfactory condition is found at Lagos, the least at Sierra Leone, where “ Mohammedanism is increasing more rapidly than Christianity, and education is making no progress.”

One of the most remarkable of recent journeys is that of Dr. James Johnston,³ who crossed Africa from Benguela on the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Zambesi. It was a walk of 4500 miles, occupying seventeen months; and though his way led through regions inhabited by tribes hostile to every stranger, he never fired a shot in anger or in selfdefense, nor lost a carrier by death. This is an absolutely unique record for a journey of any extent, and shows that he had extraordinary tact and patience in dealing with the natives, as well as unremitting care for his men. His object was to see whether there was an opportunity for Christian negroes from the West Indies to aid the missionaries as lay assistants, especially in teaching the natives the industrial arts. Taking six from Jamaica with him, lie traveled from station to station, from the establishments of the American Board at Bihé to the Scotch missions at Blantyre and on Lake Nyassa, only to be disappointed at each. There was no opening for his Jamaicans, who ultimately returned to their island. The missionary work did not seem to him to have advanced beyond the initial stage, and little progress had been made in christianizing the negro. This failure of his hopes has affected his impressions of the whole of the country through which he passed more unfavorably, perhaps, than he is aware. Its fertility, for instance, had been greatly exaggerated. Much of it was a barren wilderness, and the climate was pestilential. Of Mashonaland, the latest British acquisition in this region, he says, “ No one looking out on the dreary wastes we have traversed during the last forty-five days could hope to earn even a bare living from the sandy soil.” He traveled here for twenty-three days without seeing a native village, but this may have been due to the raids of the Matabele, and not to the poverty of the land. In Salisbury, the new town which sprang up with the advent of the miners, bankruptcy was the "order of the day,” and the liquor trade was the only thriving business. “ Out of a hundred wagons on the road to Salisbury, seventy carry an average of two thousand bottles of intoxicating liquor each.” The only things in which he apparently was not disappointed were the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, and the famous Bechuana king, Kliama, who is “a noble example of what Christianity and civilization can do for the African.” Dr. Johnston was very successful as a photographer, and the reproductions of his pictures which are given in the book are the most beautiful of African scenery which we have ever seen.

A great part of this same region was the theatre of the adventures of which Mr. Selous writes so entertainingly in his new book.⁴ He is a hunter by profession, and is honorably “ known throughout Africa as the man who never tells a lie.” But for this reputation it might be hard to credit some of tlie stories which he tells, as, for instance, of the night attack upon his camp by lions, or the escape from the Mashukulumbwi, a native tribe on the upper Zambesi, a story of extraordinary endurance, woodcraft, and pluck. They are told, moreover, with great simplicity and modesty, and with literary skill very unusual in one more accustomed to hold a gun than a pen. It is interesting to note that he does not regard the extinction of the large game in Africa as probable, with the exception of the white rhinoceros, of which only a few individuals are left. The native chiefs in the regions in which he hunted now carefully preserve the game. The only difficulty, indeed, which he had with the noted Matabele king, Lobengula, was about a hippopotamus which the king accused him of killing without permission. The latter part of his volume is chiefly devoted to an account of his pioneer work in Mashonaland. In 1889 he was employed to guide a gold-prospecting company through this country, and soon after he built a road for the South African Company through the wilderness to the mining region. This he accomplished with marked success and without exciting the hostility of the natives. It is curious to notice with what different views these two men, the hunter and the Scotch physician, both equally truthful, regard the same country. We have quoted Dr. Johnston’s opinion. Mr. Selous, on the other hand, thinks well of it not only for its mineral but for its agricultural wealth, and as a place for stock-raising. Though well within the tropics, its elevation above the sea is so great, three to six thousand feet, that it has “ a thoroughly temperate climate.” In winter it is “ apt to become so keen and cold that an Englishman suddenly transplanted from home, and deposited, without knowing where he was, on some part of the Maskona uplands, would never dream that he was in tropical Africa, but would rather be inclined to believe that he stood on some wild moorland in northern Europe; and the sight of a bed of bracken, looking identical with what one sees at home, would only lend color to this belief.” If any justification of the recent Matabele war were needed, it could be found in Mr. Selous’s description of the ruin wrought by their raids. In 1840, when they first came into the country, the peaceful Mashonas occupied it in great numbers, cultivated the ground, were rich in herds, lived in walled towns, and practiced some rude arts. Now a miserable remnant have fled to the tops of almost inaccessible cliffs, where they live in constant terror of their fierce neighbors. When Mr. Selous, with a party of only ten, passed by one of their kraals, the people everywhere fled precipitately at his approach, “the old women running from the cornfields, walling and shouting, and the cattleherds and goatherds leaving their flocks to shift for themselves.” Of Zimbabwi, which Mr. Rhodes, the premier of Cape Colony, proposes to make a grand South African mausoleum, Mr. Selous has much to say that is interesting. He does not agree with the conclusion reached by Mr. Theodore Bent in his Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, that the Sabaean occupation ended in the extermination of that people, but he believes that there was a gradual fusion with the natives, the traces of which are still to be seen.

Another side of life in this country when the English miners took possession is pictured in a most charming way by Lady Rose Blennerhassett.⁵ In the first part of her entertaining volume she dwells mainly on the incidents of the journey from the Capo to the hospital at Urntali, a mining town in the eastern part of Mashonaland. The last two hundred miles she and her companion walked, a feat of which she writes most modestly, but one without a parallel. The path led through a wilderness in which fever-haunted swamps alternated with sun-scorched plains. They slept in a lean-to, “ and the lions were so near that we could hear the piglike grunt they make when they are hunting.” At another halting-place, “ the lions, coming down to drink at the swampy pool just in front of our huts, made such a terrific noise that the earth seemed to shake with their roaring. It was a strange sensation to find ourselves so near all these wild creatures, with not even the slenderest door or mat to shut them out of our hut; ” and a most dangerous thing, as Mr. Selous afterwards assured them. Their servant was one Wilkins, “ an excellent but doddering old person,” who said that he had been with Livingstone, and told many anecdotes of the great explorer. Here is one of them : “ One morning, sisters, and ’t is as true as I ’m a-biting this crust, we were surrounded by strange niggers, and them niggers meant mischief if ever a nigger did. Livingstone, he says, ‘ We ’re lost,’ says he. ‘ We must go back and give up. Come here, Wilkins, and advise me.’ And I up and says, ‘Give up, doctor? Never! Let’s go and drive ’em off.’ The doctor, he looks at me. ‘ Right you are,’ he says. ‘ Lead on, my brave fellow, and I ’ll follow.’ And as true as I ’m a living man we slew seventy before breakfast! ” The various incidents of their two years in Umtali are told with such graphic simplicity, touched often with humor, that the reader must sometimes fail to realize their situation. At one time the place was literally besieged by lions, who raided the cattle-pens at night, “ and in broad daylight coolly chased the police horses across the commonage.” A leopard attempted to force its way into the hut where they lay ill of a fever. A patient died in the hospital, “ and a man with a loaded revolver sat there all night to protect the corpse from the wild beasts.” A description of the Christmas week, 1891, “ when camp and township remained ‘ on the burst,’ ” leads one to suspect that at times there was little to choose, so far as companionship was concerned, between the men and the beasts. It is scarcely necessary to add that the book is full of bright sketches of the people whom they saw, and that it is a remarkably graphic picture of life in a frontier settlement.

On the steamer which took the two nurses from Zanzibar to Europe “ was a wizened-looking child of about eight or nine, only redeemed from positive ugliness by a pair of magnificent Eastern eyes, large, lustrous, and solemn. She understood and spoke a little German, French, and Italian, but said little or nothing, made no noise, and moped about in corners.” This was Ferida, the daughter of Emin Pasha, who was at that time making his way slowly towards the Congo, a few months before bis murder. The German government has just published a splendid work, descriptive of this his last expedition, by his companion, Dr, Franz Stuhlmann.⁶ There is a rare combination of qualities in this author,— thorough scientific training, keen powers of observation, a strong interest in human nature, and literary skill, and his book is the best which has yet appeared on eastern equatorial Africa. After describing the noteworthy incidents of each march, he gives an account of each tribe which has been encountered, its mode of life, dwellings, household implements, weapons, and customs generally. In this way he has gathered an invaluable collection of ethnographical facts, as many of the tribes are apparently doomed to a speedy extinction. Emin had a roving commission to explore the territory belonging to Germany, but an ambitious desire to lead an expedition across the continent took possession of him. From Lake Victoria he went to the frontier of his former province on the Nile, and, after a vain attempt to induce his old Sudanese soldiers to join him, strove to cross the great forest in which Stanley’s expedition so nearly perished. The story of these days of fruitless efforts is perhaps the most pathetic in the annals of African travel, The pasha was nearly blind, and greatly weakened from an unhealed wound. There was little food to be bad, and be was encumbered with helpless women and children. Finally smallpox broke out, and, separating the well from the sick, he sent the former back to the coast with his companion ; his parting words to him being a greeting to his child, Ferida. He himself remained with a few score of men and women, and, after some months’ delay, was compelled, probably, to accompany a band of slave hunters to the Congo. About three days’ march from the river he was murdered by the leader of the party. A very interesting account of a visit to Uganda is also given by Dr. Stuhlmann, as well as a brief sketch of the recent civil and religious dissensions which have led to the English protectorate.

Into the northern part of this same region Count Teleki led the expedition of which his comrade, Lieutenant von Höhnel, is the historian.⁷ It was a hunting and exploring expedition, and they were successful in both objects. Three hundred and fifty head of large game, including twenty-eight elephants and seventy-nine rhinoceroses, fell to the count’s rifle alone. Too much space is given to these hunting incidents, which have a great similarity, and the reader at last is inclined to be shocked at what seems to be wanton slaughter. From Zanzibar past Mt. Kilimanjaro, through Masailand and over the Kikuyu highlands, where they had an unfortunate and unnecessary encounter with the brave Wakikuyu, they are on familiar ground. Beyond this they turned from the regular caravan route to Lake Victoria into the unknown regions to the north, seeking two large lakes said to exist in Samburu. The difficulties and dangers which they encountered in this wilderness, from the wind which blew with the force of a hurricane and nearly buried them in the sand, and from the want of water, it would be hard to exaggerate. Scarcely a day passed without one or more of their followers being reported dead or missing. At length, on March 6, 1888, they reached the southern shore of a great lake, and, to quote from the narrator, “ although utterly exhausted after the seven hours’ march in the intense and parching heat, we felt our spirits rise once more as we stood upon the beach at last, and saw the beautiful water, clear as crystal, stretching away before us. The men rushed down, shouting, to plunge into the lake, but soon returned in bitter disappointment: the water was brackish ! ... A few scattered tufts of fine, stiff grass rising up in melancholy fashion near the shore, from the wide stretches of sand, were the only bits of green, the only signs of life of any kind. Here and there, some partly in the water, some on the beach, rose up isolated skeleton trees, stretching up their bare, sun-bleached branches to the pitiless sky. No living creature shared the gloomy solitude with us ; and far as our glass could reach there was nothing to be seen but desert, — desert everywhere.” From where they stood sixteen craters of volcanoes could be counted, from one of which, smooth and straight as a chimney, arose clouds of smoke.

For a month they struggled along the dreary eastern shore of the lake, which they named Rudolf, after the ill - fated crown prince of Austria, nearly perishing from want of food and water. At the northern end — it was about two hundred miles long by twenty-five broad —they found an inhabited country ; but the natives were hostile, and, in the weak condition of their followers, they could not force their way through. A week’s journey to the eastward brought them to a similar but smaller lake, to which they gave the name of Stefanie, the wife of the crown prince. Its water was very brackish, and the beach was strewn with fish, which lay about in great quantities in various stages of decomposition.” Although these discoveries do not appear to have any other than a geographical importance, yet the expedition will rank high among exploring expeditions for the courage and skill with which the two Europeans overcame great obstacles. Lieutenant von Höhnel took the scientific part of the work, and proved himself to he an excellent collector and cartographer. In an appendix he gives a partial list of his collection of specimens of the fauna and flora of the regions visited, among which are many new species. The translation, it may he added, is admirably done.

The legendary and folk-lore literature of the African races is still very meagre. Many travelers, as Dr. Stuldmann for instance, give a few examples of stories in the accounts of their journeys, but few as yet have made a special study of this branch of science. Therefore Mr. Stanley’s little book ⁸ of stories, told over the camp-fire by his native followers, has a peculiar value. Mr. Stanley’s lack of literary skill probably gives rather an artificial air to them, and here and there one notes suggestions of Western and Asiatic influences ; but that they are substantially genuine specimens of the tales of Zanzibari porters there is no reason to doubt. They are almost exclusively stories in which the animals — in one a rabbit, in another a terrapin —bear the principal parts, and are represented as superior to man. In one only, if we are not mistaken, is the supernatural element entirely wanting, and love between a woman and a man described.

Far more important than this collection are Mr. Heli Chatelain’s fifty tales of the Angola tribes on the west coast who speak the Ki-inbundu language.⁹ He has evidently used great diligence in gathering the material for this volume, and his notes show an extraordinary knowledge of the language and customs of the natives. The original text of each story is given upon one page, and a very literal translation on the opposite. Animals, again, are prominent in these, the leopard especially, and there are several stories of the hare, bearing a faint resemblance to some of Uncle Remus’s. In many there are interesting allusions to the beliefs and modes of life of the natives, and occasionally a didactic strain is evident. Some of them, too, show a certain unexpected refinement in thought and language, indicating an intelligence above that of the mere savage. The editor has given a page of music and maps of the region, which increase the value of his interesting volume.

A few words may he added in respect to the regions yet unexplored in Africa. The most important of these is the central Sudan, including the negroid states south of the Sahara. Only one or two Europeans have succeeded in reaching them, and it is probable that for years to come their Mohammedan rulers will pursue their policy of excluding Christians from their territories. Next in importance are parts of Abyssinia and the regions adjacent on the south now in the Italian sphere of influence. The southern and southeastern portions of the Congo Free State are still very imperfectly known. With these exceptions, it may be said that Africa is as thoroughly explored to-day as Asia, and probably better known as a whole than South America.