surplus population to emigrate to America. These countries realize the necessity of creating new markets, if they are to continue to advance. In Africa the colonies must depend upon the home country, and open new fields for manufactures and commerce. They know that in equatorial Africa there are more than 100,000,000 people wanting every thing, even clothes.
The whole coast of Africa on the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans from the Red Sea to the Isthmus of Suez, is claimed by European nations, with the exception of two or three small inhospitable and barren strips of coast. England occupies Egypt, and will hold it for an indefinite period. France has its colonies in Tripoli, Algiers, and Morocco, and on the Atlantic coast its factories in Senegambia. It seeks a route from Algiers across the desert to Lake Chad, and from Senegambia up the Senegal by steamer, thence across the country by rail to the head of navigation on the Niger, and down that river to Timbuctu.
England occupies Sierra Leone, the Gold and Slave Coasts, the delta and valley of the Niger, and its branch the Benue. It has factories on these rivers, and small steamers plying on them, and seeks Timbuctu by the river Niger. It controls almost the entire region where the palm-oil is produced.
Timbuctu, long before Africa was known to Europe, was the centre of a large trade in European and Asiatic goods. Caravans crossed the Desert of Sahara from Timbuctu north to the Mediterranean, and east to Gondokoro, carrying out slaves, gold and ivory and bringing back European and Asiatic goods.
Sandwiched between the English possessions, Liberia struggles for existence, its inhabitants fast degenerating into barbarism.
Joining the English possessions on the Gold Coast, two degrees north of the equator, are the German possessions of Kamerun, with high mountains and invigorating breezes; but the land at the foot is no more favorable to the European than the Guinea coast. One or two hundred miles in the interior of this part of the continent, the land rapidly rises to the tableland of equatorial Africa, rich and fertile, resembling the valley of the Kongo, possibly habitable by Europeans.
Next, the French occupy the Ogowe, its branches, and the coast, to the Kongo, and claim the country inland to the possessions of the Kongo Free State. Under M. Brazza, they have thoroughly explored the country to the river Kongo, and have established factories at Franceville and other places.
