Africa Unveiled
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MERENGKY-CIOM'^TrrrKi u::iVEn£iTE:T AFRICA UNVEILED. Digitized by the internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/africaunveiledOOrevh : ; AFRICA UNVEILED. BY THE REV. HENRY ROWLEY, Formerly of the Unmersifies' Mission to Central Africa. "AFRICA SEMPER ALIQUID NOV! REFERT." WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS. PUBLISHID UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. LONDON SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : FIELDS 77, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN J PICCADILLY 4, ROYAL EXCHANGE J 48, J AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. New York : Pott, Young & Co. 1S76. silenced, but not satisfied. And my dissatisfaction was justified, for in course of time the interior of Africa, south of the Sahara, was found to be not LONDON: Printed by Jas. Tniscott & Son, Suffolk Lane, City. CONTENTS. —— PAGB Geographical Features of Africa i The"Different Races of Africa—^The Nilotic Family . 29 The Different Races of Africa—^The Nigritian Family . 55 Different Forms of Government in Africa ... 80 Religious Beliefs and Customs of the Africans . n i Domestic and Social Customs of the Africans . 144 African Slavery and Slave Trade 171 Christianity in Africa . 211 — AFRICA UNVEILED. — CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHICAL FEATURES OF AFRICA. Many years ago, when I was a small boy, I recollect pondering over a map of Africa, and being greatly perplexed thereby. My difficult)^ was this. South of Barbary, and west of the valley of the Nile, the map described a desert which extended right across the continent to the Atlantic Ocean, and southwards to the Mountains of the Moon, below which mysterious range of hills was a blank space, reaching to the region of the Cape, which, I was told, was also a barren region. But I could not beUeve that this great area was a desert It seemed to my boyish mind contrary to the providence of God, to condemn so vast a portion of the world to such a repulsive sterility, and, in my fashion, I said as much. I was told by my preceptor, a rigid but most devout old Puritan, that God knew what was best for the world, and was warned not to trouble myself with matters that were too high for me. I was silenced, but not satisfied. And my dissatisfaction was justified, for in course of time the interior of Afiica, south of the Sahara, was found to be not 2 POPULATION OF AFRICA. a torrid desert, not " a barren and dry land where no water is," and " without inhabitants," but a land crowned by fertile plains, where lived vast numbers of animals, that for their sustenance required much flesh, and a never-failing abundance of pas- " turage ; dense forests, where were both small and great beasts"; inland seas, which in extent equalled the lakes of North America; far reaching rivers, whose life waters and valleys swarmed with ; great mountains, some of which were raised so high that their summits were covered with perpetual snow ; a climate which needed but the agency of civilisation to make it as healthy as any other region within the tropics ; and, above all, a land which gave food and shelter to probably 150 milUons of human beings; and under happier circumstances might sustain 1,000 millions. It may be thought that this is an exaggerated esti- mate of the population of Africa, I do not think so. is is It more thickly peopled than generally supposed ; indeed, some parts of the country are densely popu- lated. The Shillocks afford an illustration of this. These people inhabit the left bank of the White Nile, and occupy a territory about two hundred miles long and ten broad. In 1871 they were subjected to Egypt ; a census of their villages was then made, and it was proved that 1,200,000 souls had been added to the dominion of the Khedive. In the ShUlock country, it is true, there is to be found everything that contributes to the exuberance of life—agriculture, pasturage, fishing, and the chase ; but there are many PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 3 such districts in Africa, and few where human beings are not plentiful The physical geography of Africa is very remarkable, and until within the last thirty years was but little known. Various theories on this subject had from time to time been propounded by eminent men, but it was not till 1852 that the true structure of the country was demonstrated. In his address to the Royal Geo- graphical Society in this year, Sir Roderic I. Murchison declared what were the true featmes of the most ancient, as well as the actual, geography of Africa. He maintained that during countless ages, anterior to the creation of the human race, the old rocks which now form the outer fringe of Central Africa, circled round an interior marshy or lacustrine country, and that the present state of this region represented the resi- dual geographical phenomena of that primeval age. At the same time, he also showed that the differences between the geological past and present of Africa were enormous ; that the lands of Central Africa have been much elevated above the level of the sea, that eruptive rocks have penetrated them in many places ; that deep chasms and defiles have been sud- denly formed in the subtending ridges, through which the waters have been let off to a lower level to cleave their way finally as rivers to the sea. By one of those happy coincidences, which may more properly be called providences, that have tended to excite and maintain interest in Africa of late years, Dr. Livingstone, at the very time this theory was 4 THE VICTORIA FALLS. propounded, was forcing his way across the continent, and, in utter ignorance of Sir Roderic's great inductive feat, had ascertained by actual observation, and be- yond all doubt, that the whole of Central South Africa was at one time a vast lake country ; and, furthermore, on his discovery of the Victoria Falls, had found the exact spot where, by some mighty convulsion, the rocks which there held in the waters were rent in twain, so as to permit them to escape outwards. The Victoria Falls are rightly placed amongst the wonders of the world. The Zambezi, which at this place is nearly a thousand yards broad, suddenly dis- appears. It descends at one plunge into an enor- mously deep chasm less than a himdred feet wide. This great fissure traverses the channel of the river from the right bank to the left, and thence continues its course through the hills to the north-east for thirty or forty miles, where the river emerges into a compara- tively low country, through which, with but few obstructions, it pursues its way down to the Mozam- bique channel. The convulsion which caused this enormously deep chasm undoubtedly broke through the barrier by which the waters of the Zambezi were dammed back in the great central lake. The superstitions of the natives who live in the neigh- bourhood of these falls lead them to invest them with supernatural characteristics. They call them Mosyoa- tunya (the sounding smoke), because dark clouds, which look like the smoke of a burning jungle, are constantly seen to hang over the broad belt THE VICTORIA FALLS. 5 of the river, and thundering sounds are constantly- heard to proceed from the falls. The sudden plunge of the river into the yaw-ning chasm naturally produces these sounds, and the conflict between the raging waters and the walls of rock through which they force their way, produces volumes of spray which rise high above the river, and are then collected into clouds and borne before the wind. But the spray is not uniformly diffused above the great fissure, for in some places it assumes the form of great pillars, like the pLUar of cloud that guided the Israelites of old, among which the sunbeams play and produce glorious circles of prismatic colour. Dr. Linngstone was the first civilised man who beheld these falls. The natives who accompanied him on his first visit to them, saw them for the first time, and were awe-struck with the awful grandeur and wondrous beauty of the scene. The roaring of the waters, the rainbow hues in the rising spray, the gorgeous tropical verdure on either side of the river, so impressed them with religious feeling, that they offered prayers and sacrifices to what they imagined to be the spiritual powers of the locality. -Recent researches have tended to show that the basin-shaped structure of Central South Africa ex- tends northwards ; but how far northwards it extends, has not yet been clearly ascertained. This, however, is certain, the physical structure of Central Africa determines that of almost the entire continent. The watershed is not, as was long supposed, a 6 WATERSHED OP CENTRAL AFRICA. mountain chain sending its roaring torrents on the one side to the Atlantic, and on the other towards the Indian Ocean, but is represented by a vast basin-shaped plateau, varying in height from two to foiu: thousand feet above the level of the sea, which stretches through many degrees of longitude and many degrees of latitude, and in which the Nile, the Zambezi, the Congo, and some other rivers of con- siderable magnitude, have their source—immediately, in the existing lakes, like the Nile and the Shire, or as the drains of the country, like the Niger, the Zambezi, the Congo, and the Orange river. Africa, it is said, has always something new to show, and for many years to come geographical enterprise will find an ample recompense in the discoveries it will make ; yet I think it may be safely affirmed, with regard to the physical geography of Africa, that all future discoveries will prove subsidiary to those already made.