given birth to a new town. The actual increase
is of about five-and-twenty thousand, but it is
added to no more than five-and-thirty thousand,
that is to say, there has been within two-sevenths
of an actual doubling.

LIFE IN AFRICA.

FOR a long time one of the largest of the
continents of the so-called "Old World" has
laid like a huge blank on the map of the Eastern
Hemisphere, with a fringe of civilisation hanging
loosely round it. But our British lions
seem inclined to dispute the lordship of the
African lion, and within a few years Garth and
Livingstone, Burton, Speke, and Petherick, and
a Gallico-American gentleman, Du Chaillu,
have given us more information than all
previous writers put together had afforded. We
can mark in our new maps rivers and mountains,
lakes and plains, and we have a considerable
amount of knowledge as to the production of
the continent, and the manners, customs, and
character of many of the tribes. But on all
these subjects we can only have so much
information as each traveller can glean for himself—
a few miles of river, a section of a plain, the
manners and customs of a tribe judged from the
few individuals with whom he comes in contact.
For Central Africa is a land without a history,
without a literature, almost without traditions.
There are no buildings either for use or
ornament in the present, and no ruins to speak of
the past; there are no roads, no bridges, no
dams, no canals. The civilisation with which
the natives have come into contact has brought
with it the cruel slave trade, and this has
debased and demoralised even the savage.

All that we do know tends to produce amazement.
We find a land of most luxuriant
vegetation, abundantly watered, a land of vast
forests, whose magnificent trees furnish choice
woods, a land where the pine-apple is a weed,
where rice grows wild, groundnuts abound, and
tobacco, maize, and cotton, might be grown to
any extent. Elephants with their precious
ivory tusks roam in herds, and there are
antelopes of all sizes and of species innumerable.
There is indeed a profusion of animal and
vegetable life, which it would be impossible to
enumerate; and in spite of all this the inhabitants
starve. They do not till the ground, and they
do not rear cattle. They eat what comes to
hand—elephant, hippopotamus, rat, mouse, dog,
frog, slug—and when food runs short they fall
back upon man. Some eat man cooked, others
prefer him raw; some eat him young, some
old; some eat enemies killed in battle, others
have no objection to a friend, and kill him when
he is ill and dying, or barter for his body after
he is dead. They bring the traveller a plump
slave as we should offer a fowl.

But we must point out in due order the
ground over which each of our lions has roamed.
First, there is Captain Burton, in the east of
Africa. He has explored that part Iying north
of Livingstone's region and south of the equator,
and from the coast back some nine hundred and
fifty miles to the great inland lake Tanganyika.
He was accompanied by Captain Speke, who
pushed on to the north-east of the lake Tanganyika
till he came to another great lake, Nyanza,
in which he believes he has found the long-
sought sources of the Nile.

Mr. Petherick, starting from Egypt, has traced
the White Nile back into the heart of Africa, and
so near to the point at which Captain Speke left
his lake Nyanza, that the future explorations of
these gentlemen in this direction excite great
interest.

On the opposite side of the Continent, that is
the west, and just two degrees north and south
of the equator, the American traveller, Du
Chaillu, has opened a new region. His account
of the gorilla and other apes has already been
noticed in this journal, and it is proposed also
to give a sketch of the region through which he
travelled.

Captain Burton gives an account of his travels
in two mighty volumes, or rather he gives two
accounts, and writes alternate chapters: one in
a light and playful style, and the other to suit that
part of the public requiring " stronger meat."

Captain Burton—or, as his escort dubbed
him, "The Wicked White Man"—was at the
head of an expedition which left the harbour of
Zanzibar on the 16th of June, 1857, with the
intention of ascertaining, if possible, the limits
of the great Tanganyika Lake, or, as it used to
be called, the " Sea of Ujiji." Zanzibar is an
island lying off the east coast of Africa, and
about seven degrees south of the equator. It
trades with the interior in ivory, copal, and
slaves, the average yearly import of the latter
being fourteen thousand. The trade is carried
on by means of caravans, and these consist of an
Arab merchant and native porters, from a dozen
to two hundred, for they have no beasts of burden.
These caravans pass constantly between the coast
and lake Tanganyika. We have known of the
existence of this lake for a long time. The
earliest accounts of the Portuguese discoveries,
in 1589, mention the traffic on this great
internal sea; and the Wanyamwesi, or proprietors
of the soil of that part of Central Africa lying
east of the lake, have from time immemorial
visited the coast, trading in ivory and slaves;
of late years, too, they have acted as porters to
the Arab merchants. But Burton and Speke
are the first Europeans of modern times who
have visited and navigated the lake. After a
great deal of trouble the court of Zanzibar
consented to procure for them a favourable reception
on the coast of Africa, and to ensure the
protection of the chiefs of the country through
which they had to pass. In spite of this the
journey was both difficult and dangerous, and
occupied two years and three months. They
left, as we have said, the harbour of Zanzibar,
crossed from thence to Kaole on the mainland,
and travelled west and north-west a distance of
nine hundred and fifty-five miles, until they
reached Ujiji, on the Tanganyika Lake. This
is divided by Captain Burton into five regions.