ZOOLOGY OF AFRICA. 565 the water-vine, &c., are among the useful trees, yielding articles of food. The acacias and the sandarach-tree yield the valuable gums of com merce. man The animal products of Africa are remarkable. The species of apes, baboons, and monkeys are numerous. The chimpansé resembles more than even the orang-outang of the Oceanic islands, having a much greater facility of standing and walking upright, and of using the hands. The lion of Africa is the noblest animal of his race, the Asiatic lions being much inferior in size and strength. He approaches his prey slyly, like others of the feline tribe, never attacking openly, and when within a proper distance, pounces upon the victim with a tremendous leap. The leopard is fierce, powerful, and active, but inferior in size and strength to the tiger of Asia. The panther is found over a great part of Africa, and does not materially differ from the leopard. The tiger cat is a smaller animal of the same family. The genus of hyenas is almost exclusively confined to Africa: the striped hyena is found in the north, and the spotted hyena in the south; and there is an animal called the hyena dog also found in the southern section. These creatures are ravenous and fierce; they are nocturnal in their habits, and live chiefly upon carrion and offals. Elephants are numerous; they are a distinct species, and, as far as is known, smaller than the Asiatic elephant. The natives have not domesticated them; but they hunt them for their teeth. The food of the elephant is fruits, and the roots, leaves, and branches of trees. He is dangerous only when attacked. The hippopotamus, or river horse, is found in most of the rivers and lakes from the Nile to the Orange River; it dwells mostly in the water, from which it never goes far, but seems to derive its food chiefly from the land, browsing on the nearest shrubs, and feeding on the reeds of the marshes. The negroes and Hottentots take it in pits. The teeth furnish ivory, and the hides are made into whips and shields. The rhinoceros of Africa has two horns, and the skin is not disposed in folds like the Asiatic species. The horns are esteemed by the natives for their supposed medicinal virtues. Its chief food is reeds and shrubs. The zebra, the dow, and the quagga are distinct species of the horse kind. They are remarkable for the beauty of their markings, being regularly striped from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail. They are timid and swift, and if taken young may be tamed. The antelopes of Africa are numerous, comprising no less than sixty species peculiar to it. Of these the gnu is the most remarkable; it partakes, in its formation, of the horse, the ox, the stag, and the antelope, having the shoulders, body, and mane of the first, the head of the second, and the tail and feet of the stag. It possesses in an eminent degree strength, swiftness, a keen scent, and a quick sight. The camelopard, or giraffe, is peculiar to Africa. It is remarkable for the great length of its fore legs and neck, which renders it the tallest of ZOOLOGY OF AFRICA. animals; the hind legs are much shorter, and the gait, though rapid, is awkward. It is extremely timid and inoffensive, and feeds upon the leaves of trees. The ostrich is a native of the torrid regions of Africa. It is generally considered as the largest of birds; but its great size and the shortness of its wings deprive it of the power of flying. It inhabits the most solitary and arid deserts, where there are few vegetables, and where the rain never comes to refresh the earth. It is said that the ostrich never drinks; but it is of all animals the most voracious, devouring leather, glass, iron, stones, or any thing that it can get. The savage nations of Africa hunt it not only for its plumage, but for its flesh, which they consider a great dainty. The secretary vulture is styled by the Hottentots the serpent-eater, from the avidity with which it catches and devours those noxious reptiles. It may be easily tamed. The sociable vulture is of gigantic size, and is very numerous in the interior of Africa. In dimensions it is equal to the condor. Like other vultures, this is a bird of the mountains; the sheltered retreats formed by their caves and fissures constituting its proper habitation. In them it passes the night, and reposes, after it has sated its appetite, during the day. At sunrise, large bands are seen perched on the rocks at the entrance of their abodes, and sometimes a continued chain of mountains exhibits them dispersed throughout the greater part of its extent. The Egyptian vulture is a common species. The crocodile inhabits the large rivers of the tropical regions, and the enormous python, a serpent of thirty feet long, lurks in the fens and morasses. The dipsas, asp, and cerastes or horned viper, are the principal venomous serpents. Of the insect tribes, the locust has from time immemorial been the scourge of this continent; scorpions, scarcely less to be dreaded than noxious serpents, are numerous, and the zebub, or fly, one of the instruments employed to punish the Egyptians of old, is still the plague of the low and cultivated districts. The Arabs and Moors, who are now scattered all over the northern parts of Africa, are of Asiatic origin. But there are at least four great families of nations strongly marked by physical peculiarities, that appear to be natives of the African continent. These are the Berbers in the north; the Negroes in the centre, and the Hottentots and Caffres in the south and east. Although the northeastern part of Africa or the Nile valley was once inhabited by civilized nations, who had carried the arts and sciences to a high degree of improvement, and the northern coasts were at subsequent periods settled by numerous Phoenician, Greek, and Roman colonies, and still later have been the seat of refined and polished Arab states- yet the great mass of this continent has remained a stranger to the arts of improved life. The natives nowhere have the art of writing; no alphabet is found among them, and there is nothing to indicate that they have ever reached beyond some of the simplest useful arts. The negroes are physically characterized by woolly hair, black skin, projecting lips, flattened nose, low and retreating forehead, and the peculiar GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS. form of the legs. Morally they are indolent, harmless, easy, and friendly in their disposition; but even in their more civilized states, many barbarous usages and 567 savage customs prevail. For ages, the blacks have been sought for as slaves in other parts of the world; and even at home, the greater part of the population is the property of the rest. Many of the negro tribes live in the most degraded state, without government, without any religion but the most absurd superstitions, without the decencies and proprieties of life-naked, and without habitations. Others are wandering shepherds, and still others have organized regular governments, built towns, and cultivated the arts, though none have ever reached a high degree of civilization. The following table exhibits the divisions of Africa, as presented in modern geography. Arabs of Africa. Canaries,. Cape Verd,. St. Helena,. Ascension,.. Negroes. Cape Town,. ..20,000 Tunis,. Timbuctoo, CHAPTER CCLXXVIII. Ancient Geography of Africa - Historical Outline. SUCH is a view of the present state of Africa. In looking at its geography, as known to the ancients, we find that they had very inadequate and erroneous notions respecting it. They were acquainted with only the northern and eastern coast, and deemed it less extensive than Europe. The term Africa is derived from the Romans, who first restricted it to the region occupied by Carthage; but it was finally extended to the whole peninsula. The Atlas were the principal African mountains known in ancient times. They were the occasion of many fanciful and fabulous ideas. It was imagined that the heavens rested upon their tops as pillars; and Atlas was personated as a gigantic Titan, who was condemned by Jupiter to sustain the vault of the skies on his shoulders. The Nile was deemed the largest river in the world. of bays and rivers giving access to its interior. Egypt. having been discovered by Asiatic adventurers, was, in defiance of the clearest geographical outlines, long considered as a part of Asia. Even in the time of of the two continents; nor is it till the era of Ptolemy, Strabo, the Nile was generally viewed as the boundary that we find the natural limits properly fixed at the Red Sea and the Isthmus of Suez. As the discoveries proceeded along the regions of Western Africa, objects presented themselves which acted powerfully on the exalted and poetical imagina tion of the ancients. They were particularly struck by those oases, or verdant islands, which reared their bosoms amid the sandy desert. Hence, perhaps, were drawn those brilliant pictures of the Hesperian Gardens, the Fortunate Islands, the Islands of the Blest, which are painted in such glowing colors, and form the gayest part of ancient mythology. There arises involuntarily, in the heart of man, a longing after forms of being, fairer and happier than any presented by the world before him-bright scenes, which he seeks and never finds in the circle of real existence. But imagination easily creates them in that dim boundary which separates the known from the unknown world. In the first discoverers of any such region, novelty usually produces an exalted state of the imagi nation and passions, under the influence of which every object is painted in higher colors than those of nature. Nor does the illusion cease, when a more complete examination proves, that, in the regions to which they are assigned, no such beings or objects exist. The human heart clings tenaciously to its fond chimeras; it quickly transfers them to the yet unknown region beyond, and, when driven thence, discovers still another, more remote, in which they can take refuge. Thus we find these fairy regions retreating before the EARLY EXPEDITIONS TO AFRICA. 569 progress of discovery, yet finding still, in the farthest | voyage of discovery under the patronage of Ptolemy advance which ancient knowledge ever made, some remoter extremity to which they could fly. The first position of the Hesperian Gardens appears to have been at the western extremity of Libya, then the farthest boundary upon that side of ancient geographical knowledge. The spectacle which it often presented that of a circuit of blooming verdure amid the desert was calculated to make a powerful impression on Grecian fancy, and to suggest the idea of a terrestrial paradise. As the first oasis became frequented, it was soon stripped of its fabled beauty; another place was found for it; and every traveller, as he discovered a new portion of that fertile and beautiful coast, fondly imagined that he had at length arrived at the long sought-for Islands of the Blest. At length, when the continent had been explored in vain, they were transferred to the ocean beyond, which the original idea of islands rendered an easy step. The Canaries, having never been passed, nor even explored, continued long to be called the Fortunate Islands, not from any peculiar felicity of soil and climate which they actually possessed, but merely because distance and imperfect knowledge left full scope to poetical fancy. Hence we find Horace painting their felicity in the most glowing colors, and viewing them as a refuge, still left for mortals, from that troubled and imperfect enjoyment which they were doomed to experience in every other portion of the globe. The extent of the unknown territory of Africa, the peculiar aspect of man and nature in that region, and the uncertainty as to its form and termination, drew toward it, in a particular degree, the attention of the ancient world. All the expeditions of discovery on record, with scarcely any exceptions save those of Nearchus and Pythias, had Africa for their object. They were undertaken with an anxious wish, first, to explore the extent of its two unknown coasts on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and next, to penetrate into the depth of that mysterious world in the interior, which, guarded by the most awful barriers of nature, enclosed, as with a wall, the fine and fertile regions of Northern Africa. At a very early period, extraordinary efforts appear to have been made to effect the circumnavigation of Africa. The first attempt is that recorded by Herodotus, as having been undertaken by order of Necho, king of Egypt, and of which we have already given an account. The memory of this voyage probably gave rise to another, which is also recorded by Herodotus. Sataspes, a Persian nobleman, having committed an act of violence, was condemned by Xerxes to be crucified. One of his friends persuaded the monarch to commute the sentence into that of a voyage round Africa, which was represented as a still severer punishment. Sataspes, accordingly, having procured a vessel and mariners in the ports of Egypt, departed on his formidable expedition. He passed the Pillars of Hercules, and sailed along the coast for several days, proceeding, probably, as far as the desert. The view of those frightful and desolate shores, and of the immense ocean which dashed against them, might well intimidate a navigator bred in the luxurious indolence of a Persian court. He was seized with a panic, and turned back. Xerxes ordered him to be put to death, but he made his escape to the Island of Samos. The next attempt was made by a private individual, Eudoxus, a native of Cyzicus, who prosecuted his first Euergetes. He explored a part of the eastern coast of Africa, and carried on some trade with the natives. A desire to circumnavigate the whole continent seems here to have seized him, and to have become his ruling passion. He found, on this coast, part of a wreck, which was said to have come from the west, and which consisted merely of the point of a prow, on which a horse was carved. This, being carried to Alexandria, and shown to some natives of Cadiz, was pronounced by them to be very similar to those attached to a particular sort of fishing vessels which frequented the coast of Mauritania; and they added, that some of these vessels had actually gone to the west, and never returned. All doubt of the possibility of accomplishing his purpose now seemed to be at an end, and Eudoxus thought only of carrying this grand undertaking into effect. Conceiving himself slighted by Cleopatra, who had now succeeded Euergetes, he determined no longer to rely on the patronage of courts, but repaired to Čadiz, then a great commercial city, where the prospect of a new and unobstructed route to India could not fail to excite the highest interest. On his way from Alexandria, he touched at Marseilles and a number of other ports, where he publicly announced his intention, and invited all who were animated by a spirit of enterprise to take a share in its execution. He accordingly succeeded in fitting out an expedition on a large scale. He had three vessels, on board of which were embarked, not only provisions and merchandise, but medical men, persons skilled in various arts, and even a large band of musicians. His crew consisted chiefly of volunteers, who, being doubtless full of extravagant hopes, were not likely to submit to regular discipline, or to endure cheerfully the hardships of such a voyage. They soon became fatigued with the navigation in the open sea, and insisted on keeping nearer to the coast. Eudoxus was obliged to comply; but soon an event happened which that experienced navigator had foreseen. The ships ran upon a shoal, and could not be got off. The cargo and part of the timber from them were carried to the shore, and from their materials a small vessel was constructed, with which Eudoxus continued his voyage. He speedily came to nations speaking, as he fancied, the same language with those he had seen on the eastern coast; but he found his vessel too small to proceed any further. He therefore returned and equipped a new expedition, but of the result of it, the ancient writers have given us no account. The Carthaginians fitted out an expedition, with a view, partly, to plant colonies on the African coast, and partly to make discoveries. This armament was commanded by Hanno, and consisted of sixty large vessels, on board of which were thirty thousand persons of both sexes. The narration begins at the passage of the Straits of Gibraltar, or the Pillars of Hercules. After sailing two days along the African shore, they came to the city of Thymiaterium, situated in the middle of an extensive plain. In two days more, they came to a cape, shaded with trees, called Solocis, or the promontory of Libya, on which they erected a temple to Neptune. They sailed round a bay thickly bordered with plantations of reeds, where numerous elephants and other wild animals were feeding.__Beyond this they found, successively, four cities. Their next course was to the great River Lixus, flowing from Libya and lofty mountains in the interior, which |