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Adventures and observations on the west coast of Africa, and its islands
Adventures and observations on the west coast of Africa and its islands Author:Charles W. Thomas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER TAN GIER—CONCLUDED. " The land shadowing with wings which li beyond the rlren of Ethiopia."—Isaiah. First Impressions—Significance of Physical Aspe... more »ct—Historical Review— Unanswered Questions—Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Egyptians—Africa of the Ancients—Portuguese Navigators—Dutch Traders—English. Trade with the Coast—Decline of Trade with Portugal—Geographical Divisions of the West Coast—The Senegal, and French Trade. Africa is, in all respects, a land of deep shades. As the voyager approaches the western shores of its intertropical regions, he beholds them enveloped in a dense haze, and beneath this gloomy pall his imagination spreads the wild charms, the bloody rites and the exuberant deformities of savage life. As he enters the mysterious borders he beholds turbid rivers, deep and sombre forests, impenetrable jungles and offensive swamps, and a race of beings upon whom night has set her ineffaceable signet. The physical aspects which Nature here presents are to him symbolic, and their many-voiced utterances tell of the moral and intellectual darkness which covers the people. Yet Africa is a land of sunshine, and, without a paradox, the light and darkness dwell together. Above the Harmat- tan fog, which generally disappears before noon, the sky is clear and cloudless, and the sun shines in his strength; and the bosom of the dense forests, beneath whose luxuriant foliage men walk in deep shadows, glistens in the light ofeternal summer. Why may we not regard these facts, also, as symbols which nature has hung out to speak the present or the future of intellectual and spiritual Africa ? Symbols, and significant symbols they are ; but as we read the former and nearer as descriptive of the present, we must read the latter and more remote as prophetic. An intellectua...« less