Morning journal and courier., 1884-06-04
African Evaporation and It's Res-lts.

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 Traditions of great rivers and great lakes in the interior. of Africa prevailed in the middle ages. and the old maps of Martin Behaim and others were marked by a multi tude of lines and names that contracted strongly with the blank s'unexplored territo- ry" that occupied the entire interior of an African map thirty-ave years ago. Ancient geography was not precise. The interior of Africa had not been explored by Europeans, but the stories told by Arabs and others f the lakes at the hesd-waters of the Nile Congo, and other rivers, were accepted, and rivers and lakes were located by guess work As there was really no reliable authority for these, as the maps differed, and az all vas confusion, geographers finally agreed to leave all blank and await exploration. The very memory of the lakes faded out, for those who form the present older generation were never told that the idea of such things had ever been. The Niger and Lake Tchad were first re-established. and during the last three decades exploration has followed exploration until the map of the interior of Africa is dotted with names as thickly as that of South America and Is really better known than Central Asia. Earth, Livingston, Burton, Speke Grant, Cameron, De Pinto Nachtipal. Schweiafurth, Baker, RohIfs,. Stantey, De
 
 devoted much of their lives, and in some cases have lost life itself, in the work of dis covery, till we now know that instead of the arid and desert country which was once be- lieved to stretch from the Sahara to near the Cape, the central African plateau is a series of immense plains, rich, we'll -watered, fertile and thickly inhabited.
 Africa is not the thinly peopled land that America was before the Latin the Saxon and the Celt settled there in millions, but is al- most everywhere thickly inhabited We have all heard so much aboat the degrade ton of the negro that Ws are apt to fancy him greatly the inferior of the noble red man !" In certain physical characters the negro of the Soudan and the Heteentos and Bushrhau of South Africa are below the Indian, but the first of these is far mora civilized than any North American Indians save those of Mexico and Peru; and the great Bantu race. to which the Zolus and the natives of the Congo and Zambezi basins belong, is composed of finely built and intelligent men. Negro and Bsntu alike are not wild nomads, living poorly on what the soil affords as do the Somali of eastern Africa, and the tribes of Sahara, es well as large part of the natives of the Americas, but are cultivators of the soil, living in villages that are often neat and homelike to look at. The population of Africa even now ia more than twice that of two Americas; but the country ia cursed with constant war, with domestic slavery, and with foreign traffic in slaves. The future of Africa is in the hands of the white race. The natives are ready to trade, and have pro- ducts of value to exchange. All that is need. cd to establish with them relations beneficial elike to white and black is consistency and fairness in the treatment of the latter by the former.
 America ought to have part in the eiviii- zation of Africa, and part also in the trade that has already commenced to grow up with its natives. American manufactured goods of all descriptions-cutlsry. ironwere, textile fabrics and all those ha1d-machipea, 'sno- tions" and inventions on which we pride oursslves-ought to find . ready sale in Africa.