prickly, harsh or strong-smelling plants, is a marked character of the wild flora, as is the prevalence of the date among the food-plants. Wherever water can be obtained the South-European cereals can generally be raised.

On the Mediterranean coast from Tripoli westwards the flora is very closely allied to that of South Europe; so that the country from the Atlas to the Mediterranean coast is reckoned as a part of the Mediterranean basin botanically.

(2) The flora of Tropical Africa from 10° N.L. to the tropic of Capricorn is allied to that of the Peninsula of India. Among cereal grasses, maize, sorghum, and many millets are cultivated: also pumpkins of many kinds, yams, and the sweet-potato.

(3) The flora of the Cape of Good Hope consists of a large number of species (about 9,000 of flowering plants), which as a whole are very unlike the plants of any other region in the world, comprising great numbers of shrubby and bulbous plants. Cape heaths and Cape bulbs are two of the favourite classes of cultivated plants with English gardeners. The climate being warm-temperate, the vine and orange as well as wheat are readily cultivated at the Cape.

530. DIVISIONS. Large portions of the interior of Africa are little or not at all known to geographers; and the known portions are only imperfectly divided politically. Africa is hereunder divided into

(1) The northern coast.

(2) Egypt and Nubia.

(3) The Sahara.

(4) The coasts of Senegambia and Guinea.

(5) The south-western coast, Angola, &c.

(6) The eastern coast, Abyssinia, Zanzibar, Mozambique, &c.

(7) The interior south of Lake Tchad.

(8) Cape Colony.

(9) The attached islands.

Sect. XXXIII. NORTHERN COAST OF AFRICA.

531. EXTENT. The states Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Barca.

532. BOUNDARIES. The tract is bounded on the West by the Atlantic; on the North by the Mediterranean; on the South by the Sahara; on the East by Egypt.

533. MOUNTAINS. The Atlas range runs nearly parallel to the sea coast; in Morocco it is 10,000-13,000 feet high, but becomes lower eastward, and dies quite away letting in the Sahara sands over Tripoli and Barca.

534. PLANTS. Morocco is naturally fertile, and can grow rice, grapes, wheat, olives, sugar-cane, and tobacco, but is desolate under Moorish rule. Algiers and Tunis are little inferior. The coast eastwards becomes more barren.

A strip of land at the southern base of the Atlas, lying between the mountains and the Sahara, is known as the “Land of Dates." The forest of date-palms is here almost continuous, and is abundantly productive.

535. RACES OF MEN. The population consists of Berbers, Arabs, and Moors. The Moors are supposed to be a mixed race, but altogether of Shemitic descent.

536. DIVISIONS. (1) Morocco is under a Moorish Emperor. It is supposed to contain about 4,000,000 inhabitants. The capital is Morocco, a dilapidated town still containing 50,000 inhabitants.

(2) Algiers, formerly celebrated as a piratical and kidnapping state, was happily taken possession of by the French in A.D. 1830. The population is now 3,000,000, besides 200,000 Europeans. Algiers, the capital, contains 60,000 inhabitants. Under the French preservation of order, cotton and silk are being largely produced, and considerable mines of iron, copper, lead, and salt have been developed. The French have also sunk some successful Artesian wells in desert spots, to the great delight of the inhabitants.

(3) Tunis, the territory of ancient Carthage, is ruled by a Bey nominally subordinate to the Sultan at Constantinople, but really an independent prince. The country contains 2,000,000 inhabitants, and is the best ruled of the Muhammadan states.

The ruins of Carthage are near Tunis, the capital, which contains 150,000 inhabitants.

(4) Tripoli, with its dependency Barca, is under a Muhammadan Bey. Tripoli is called by the Arabs "The White Sea," being covered with sand. Barca is a plateau. There is a cluster of oases in the Sahara south of Tripoli, which are attached to Tripoli politically, and marked as the district Fezzan in the maps.

Sect. XXXIV. EGYPT, with Nubia.

537. EXTENT. The natural area of Egypt is the valley of the Nile, which is rarely more than eleven miles wide, and often not more than two. On either side of this valley overflowed by the Nile, the hills rise abruptly; in a few yards we pass from the green fields of Egypt completely into the great desert of Africa. The political area of Egypt extends to various oases at several days' journey west of it in the desert.

Near Cairo we are at the apex of the delta of the Nile, and below this point the narrow valley greatly widens out. By the aid of the fresh-water canal (adjunct to the Suez Canal) the region of cultivated Egypt has been extended nearly to Suez.

538. RIVER. Egypt is the "Gift of the Nile," in central Egypt rain falls very seldom and then in slight quantity. The first cataract of the Nile in ascending the river is met with at the boundary between Egypt and Nubia. Above this point are several other cataracts, and the river-valley is still narrower than in Egypt in many places the desert rocks come to the very edge of the river. But in Upper Nubia we arrive at a much moister climate.

At Khartoum, in Upper Nubia, the Blue Nile from Abyssinia joins the White Nile (the larger branch) which descends from the Lake Victoria Nyanza near the equator. And the Nile below this point receives on its right bank one large feeder, the Atbara.

539. COMMUNICATIONS. The Nile is the great natural means of communication in Egypt.

There is a railway from Alexandria to Cairo, also from Alexandria to Suez; also a connecting link from Cairo to Suez. There are other pieces of railway from Cairo up the Nile, greatly shortening the time of ascending the river in the cold weather when the wind blows often from the south.

The Suez Canal enables large ships (steamers of 3,500 tons, not drawing more than twenty-four feet of water) to pass from Port Said on the Mediterranean to Suez on the Red Sea. This is the route through which now a large part of the traffic from England to India passes, and it is still called the "overland route," in contradistinction to that round the Cape of Good Hope. The mails, however, and the fast passengers do not go through the canal. It saves three days to land at Alexandria and proceed thence by rail to Suez.

540. RACES OF MEN. The inhabitants of Egypt are Arabs and Copts, with some Berbers; they are estimated at 4,000,000, and speak Arabic. The inhabitants of Nubia are 8,000,000, and speak Berber. Nubia is politically subject to Egypt, which is ruled by an absolute Mussulman prince called the Khedive, who is nominally under the Sultan of Constantinople, but really nearly independent.

The Khedive has got largely into debt, partly by spending money on the Suez canal and railways, partly by personal extravagance in palaces. The English Government has bought his interest in the Suez Canal, and there are English receivers in Egypt who take a large part of the revenue of the country.

541. PLANTS. Egypt (and Nubia up to the fifth cataract) contains hardly any trees besides the date-palm. The cultivated grains. are chiefly rice, sorghum, wheat, and millets.

542, TOWNS. Cairo, population 250,000, the capital. Near by are the Pyramids and the Sphinx.

Alexandria, population 160,000, founded by Alexander the Great; a port.

Sect. XXXV. THE SAHARA.

543. The Sahara extends from the shore of the Atlantic to the Nile, north from 17 N.L. It is nearly without rain. The heat is so great in the sun that meat can sometimes be cooked by placing it on the sand, and a lucifer-match dropped on the ground explodes. But, owing to the absence of clouds, the evaporation is very rapid at night, so that the nights are often cold. Also portions of the Sahara are as much as 3,000—4,000 feet above the sea; in these rain occurs and water is generally attainable. The country of Tibesti, north of Lake Tchad, is said to be tolerably well watered.

The inhabitants are Berbers and Arabs. The trade is carried on by caravans of Arab merchants, who cross the desert, from oasis to oasis, by camels in caravans. These Arab traders deal very generally in slaves, thus rendering the country unsettled and dangerous to travel in. Many of the southern Sahara nations are in a most barbarous state, given to bloody superstitions; and in some cannibalism largely obtains. The eastern portion of the Sahara towards Egypt is generally in a better condition than the west and south.

Sect. XXXVI. SENEGAMBIA AND GUINEA.

544. EXTENT. This coast may be taken to extend from the river Senegal to the island of Fernando Po, and the basin of the Niger may be supposed connected with it.

545. CLIMATE. The climate on this coast is moist and