life present anything to redeem this outward deformity. Their kraals, or villages, consist of a confused crowd of little conical hovels, composed of twigs and earth, in which large families sit and sleep without having room to stand upright. The fire in the middle fills these mansions with thick smoke, the floors being deeply covered with every species of filth. At festivals, when an ox or a sheep is killed, the Hottentots rip open the belly, tear out the entrails, which they throw on the coals, and feast on them before the animal is completely dead. Yet they are a friendly, hospitable race, living together in the greatest affection and harmony. The sluggish and senseless stupidity with which they have been so generally taxed, seems to have been in a great measure produced by their degrading subjection to the Dutch boors." It has been asserted that the Hottentots are destitute of all ideas of religion; but this is not correct. It is ascertained that they believe in a Supreme Being, as well as in an inferior spirit of malignant nature; and that they practise certain superstitious rites, such as are usual among savages.

Such is the description given of the Hottentots as they were under the Dutch rule. Since the Cape came into the possession of the British, they have not been treated with the same neglect and cruelty as they experienced from the Dutch, who used to prohibit Hottentots, equally with dogs, from entering their places of worship; still, with some exceptions, arising from the beneficial effects produced in some places by the missionaries, the account seems to remain substantially true. Immediately to the north of the colony, and on the borders of the Snewburg or Snowy Mountains, are the Bosjesmans, or Bushmans, the most savage and degraded of all the South Africans. They were visited in 1797 by Mr Barrow, private secretary to Lord Macartney, with the view of ascertaining whether friendly relations might not be entered into with them, to prevent their incursions upon the farms of the Europeans.

Mr Barrow, at the same period, crossed the frontier which divides the colony from the country of the Caffres, and made acquaintance with this race, differing widely in almost all respects from their neighbours the Bushmans. He found them a handsome and spirited people, of frank and generous deportment, leading a roaming pastoral life, and possessing numbers of cattle, in the rearing of which they seemed proficient.

Before the commencement of the present century, little more was known respecting the original inhabitants of Southern Africa than what we have thus generally indicated. But in 1801, two gentlemen, Messrs Trutter and Somerville, made an excursion to a considerable distance beyond the districts of the Bushmans and the Caffres, whom Mr Barrow had visited, and discovered a large river, now called Orange River, flowing westward into the Atlantic. The banks of this river they found *Murray's Africa.

inhabited by a pastoral tribe called the Koranes; and the information they received from this people inducing them to continue their journey still farther to the north, they at last reached what not a little surprised them—a city or town of two or three thousand houses, very neatly built, and well-arranged. The name of this city was Lattakoo; and the accounts which the travellers brought back of it to the Cape, and of the friendliness with which they had been received by the Boshuanas, who were then the prevalent tribe, induced the government to send Dr Cowan and Lieutenant Denovan to continue the discovery, and, if possible, make their way past Lattakoo, so as ultimately to reach Mozambique on the east coast. The issue of this expedition was unfortunate. The travellers reached Lattakoo in safety, but were killed at a distance of eleven days' journey beyond it. The same route was afterwards pursued by Dr Henry Lichtenstein, who added considerably to the knowledge then possessed of this part of Africa. But the most enterprising traveller in these regions was Mr John Campbell, a missionary, who, animated with an eager desire to spread Christianity among the rude Hottentots and Caffres, undertook a journey for that purpose in 1813. He reached Lattakoo, made known the object of his visit to Mateebe, king of the Boshuanas, and, after some importunacy, obtained leave to establish a missionary station in the capital. Having succeeded in the object of his expedition, Mr Campbell returned, but made a second journey to Lattakoo in 1820. He found the missionary establishment in active operation, but little progress had been made in converting the natives, who manifested the most profound indifference on the subject of religion. Mr Campbell now penetrated beyond Lattakoo, and came among tribes till then unknown, some of them showing a considerable advance in the arts of life, inhabiting neat villages, cultivating the ground, smelting iron and copper, and manufac turing various implements. He also came upon the borders of an immense desert, which, from its appearance, and the information which he was enabled to collect respecting it, he thought entitled to be named the Southern Sahara, as rivalling in extent the Great Northern Desert. Whether, as he was led to imagine, this Desert stretches from the tropic of Capricorn, where he saw its extremity, to the equator, is a point which can only be settled by farther discovery; but the supposition does not appear probable.

Subsequently to Mr Campbell's journey, these regions have been visited by other travellers, who have made us better acquainted with the tribes of the South Cape, by giving us details of their customs and manner of life. The latest of these is Mr Robert Moffat, likewise a missionary. The general conclusion, from the accounts of these various travellers, seems to be, that the southern extremity of Africa is inhabited by two principal races--the Hottentots, who, both physically and intellectually,

are far inferior to the average of mankind; and the Caffres, a bold and savage, but promising race, resembling in their general features the natives of other parts of Africa, and divided into a number of tribes, who inhabit villages scattered through the country which borders on the Southern Desert.

While describing the inhabitants of Southern Africa, we have left the general features of the country itself undescribed. The following passage will supply the deficiency:-" Southern Africa consists," says a writer, "of a most strange assemblage of mountains and plains, of spots lovely and picturesque beyond description, and gifted with inexhaustible fertility, and of seemingly boundless plains, where barrenness reigns so completely paramount, that the very principle of vegetation appears to be extinct. At a certain distance from the colony we enter upon regions over which the clouds of ignorance-almost the only clouds one meets with still brood. We traverse large rivers, which rise no one knows where, and envelop their exits in equal obscurity. Ranges of mountains also, with appellations uncouth, and hiding no one knows what treasures of the animal and vegetable kingdoms in their unvisited recesses, sweep before us along the verge of the horizon, dim, blue, and shadowy, like so many fragments of fairyland. And if the great outlines of the landscape be original and bold, the filling up and colouring are no less so. Everything upon which the eye rests has the appearance of having been cast in a mould nowhere else made use of in the system of nature. Among the terrestrial animals, what bulk and fantastic formations! How numerous and strikingly contrasted are the groups that present themselves! In their character and habits what extremes seem to meet! How unspeakably lavish seems to be the waste of vitality! Yet who will dare to say that, in this prodigious outpouring of animal life, there is a single creature that does not enjoy and adorn the scene on which it moves? If there be anything we should be disposed to think out of place, it is the stunted representatives of humanity, who, under the name of Bushmen, roam in indescribable misery and degradation over those sublime savannahs. To a man of imagination, nothing more inspiring can be conceived than climbing one of the breezy peaks overlooking that strange wilderness, at the moment that the dawn is busily unfolding all its varied features. From every tree the heavy dew-drops pour like rain; streams of white mist, smooth and glassy as a tranquil river, float slowly down the valleys, reflecting from their surface the trees, and cliffs, and crags on either hand. Here, through openings between feathery mimosas, weeping-willows, and tall trembling reeds, we catch a glimpse of some quiet lake, the haunt of the hippopotamus; while a herd of graceful purple antelopes are seen drinking on its further margin. There, amidst thick clumps of camel-thorn, we behold a drove of giraffes, with heads eighteen feet high, browsing on the tops

of trees.

Elsewhere, the rhinoceros pokes his long ugly snout from a brake. While the lion, fearless in the consciousness of his own strength, parades his tawny bulk over the plain, or reclines, in sphinx-like attitude, beneath some ancient tree."*

EASTERN AFRICA.

With the exception of the countries bordering on the Red Sea-Egypt, Nubia, and Abyssinia-which cannot be included in so general a survey as the present, the eastern coast of Africa is undoubtedly the least-known portion of the whole circuit of the continent. The tract of country extending from the northern extremity of Caffreland to Cape Guardafui, and including the states or territories of Sofala, Mozambique, Zanguebar, and Ajan, was early visited by the Portuguese in their voyages to India; and in the course of the sixteenth century, various settlements were planted in it by them, similar to those which they planted along the Guinea Coast. The most conspicuous difference was, that here the ruling race were not pure negroes, but men of Arabic descent, and vehement Mohammedans. It was from these that the Portuguese wrested the immense line of coastterritory which they once held in this part of Africa, and of which they made Mozambique the capital. On the ruin of the Portuguese power in India, their settlements in Eastern Africa declined; the Arabs and blacks reconquered a great portion of their ancient territory; and it is now merely by sufferance that the once-powerful Portuguese retain a footing on the coast at all. What they do possess, however, they guard with the utmost jealousy; and they testify extreme aversion to the intrusion of any other European nation into these territories where they once lorded it so proudly. Mr Salt, who visited Mozambique in 1808, found it to contain a population of less than three thousand, of whom only five hundred were Portuguese. "The rural population of this part of Africa," says Mr Macculloch, "is in the most degraded state; and although the soil be naturally rich and productive, the culture of cotton, indigo, sugar, and other articles of commerce is wholly neglected. Rice, millet, and manioc are raised almost without labour, furnishing, with cocoa-nuts, almost the entire food of the slaves. The commerce of Mozambique has greatly decreased, in consequence of our exertions to suppress the traffic in slaves; but although much diminished, the slave trade is still carried on to a considerable extent both with Brazil and Arabia. These slaves, who are chiefly of the tribe of the Monjores, and brought from the centre of the continent, a distance of forty or forty-five days' journey from the colony, are procured from the native merchants in exchange for salt, shells, tobacco, coarse cloths, &c. Goods costing about two dollars, will bring in, as

*Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 68, Article " African Field Sports."

the case may be, either a slave or an elephant's tusk, weighing from sixty to eighty pounds of ivory. Hippopotamus' tusks, gold dust, Columbo-root, gums, and amber, are the other chief exports."

From these few particulars, which include nearly all that is known of this part of Africa, it will appear that, with the exception of the infusion of the Mohammedan and Arabic element, which is here very strong, it bears a close resemblance to the corresponding portion of the western coast. There are the same impediments, arising from climate, to the acquisition of much knowledge of the country by Europeans, who, at best, are unable to penetrate farther than a few miles into the interior. It appears probable, indeed, that the last portions of the coast of Africa to be thoroughly explored will be these sites of the declining Portuguese colonies.

CENTRAL AFRICA.

Under the general name of Central Africa may be included the whole of the interior of the continent south of the Great Desert. This immense extent of country may be divided into two parts-Southern Central Africa, lying between the tropic of Capricorn and the equator; and Northern Central Africa, called also Soudan, or Nigritia, lying between the equator and the Great Desert. The former is as yet totally unknown and unexplored; and before our information respecting it can be at all authentic and accurate, two most difficult expeditions must have been made, which have not yet been so much as proposedone from the Cape of Good Hope northwards as far as the Mountains of the Moon, the other transversely across the continent from Congo to Zanguebar or Mozambique. At what future period the spirit of enterprise may achieve these two journeys it is impossible to tell.

Northern Central Africa, or Nigritia, has, on the other hand, been penetrated by travellers, who have advanced into it from all directions. From the earliest times this part of Africa attracted attention, as being the country through which the famous Niger flowed, on whose banks the great city of Timbuctoo, of the wealth of which vague accounts had reached the shores of the Mediterranean, was reputed to be situated. To ascertain the course of this river, and to reach this celebrated negro city, were the leading objects of all who engaged in the enterprise of African discovery. In the year 1618 an English company was formed for the purpose of opening up a communication with Timbuctoo, and not long afterwards a similar company was formed in France. For a century and a half the two nations continued to compete with each other in the enterprise: the English trying to make their way up the river Gambia, which they imagined to be the outlet of the Niger; the French, on the other hand, persevering along the Senegal, which seemed to them more likely to be iden