In Africa, the whole country looks, for all that naan has done,
just as it did when it came from the hands of its Maker.
The only roads are footpaths worn by the feet of the natives
into hollows a few inches deep, and about fifteen or eighteen
inches wide, winding from village to village, as if made by
believers in the curved line being that of beauty, or by
people who had already attained that state of competence
to which we all aspire, when we may toddle round our
own little wavy walks without hurry. The huts built
here have no ruins, except when they are burned, and
then a thin layer of the red clay, with which they were
plastered, and the impressions of the reeds which formed
the walls, remain with the colour and consistence of soft
bricks. But these soon moulder away; the only durable
monuments to be met with, are mill-stones, wern in the
middle a couple of inches or more in depth; and cairns
in the passes of the mountains, of which tradition has no
record, but the salutation addressed to th em—“ Hail! 0
Chief—let it be well with us in the country to which we
are going! ”—may mean, that they are supposed to be the
resting-places of departed Chiefs.
I t is a very remarkable fact, that while in many parts of
the world the stone, bronze, and iron instruments of men who
have passed away have been found, no flint arrow-heads,
spears, axes, or other implements of this kind, as far as we
can ascertain, have ever been discovered in Africa. Dr. Kirk,
while botanizing in the Delta of the Zambesi, came upon a bed
of gravel, in which the fossil bones of nearly all the animals
now living in the country, as hippopotami, wild hogs, buffaloes,
antelopes, turtles, crocodiles, and hyenas, were associated with
pottery of the same nature and ornamental designs, as that
now in common use by the inhabitants. Similar animal
remains were observed in a bed of gravel in the Zambesi in
1856, and now, in 1863, in the sand on the ^shores of Lake
Nyassa, pottery was found, with buffalo and other large
bones; but in no case have we found a specimen of the
weapons with which these animals may have been killed for
human food.
In attempting to decipher the testimony of the rocks
in the Lake and other regions of southern Africa, it had
always been a sore puzzle, that few or none of the regular
geological series, as described in books'; could be made
out. The absence of marine limestone, and the evidences of
the oscillations of land and sea, which are so common in
other countries, baffled our unaided inquiries. Ho chalk nor
flints were ever met with. The nearest resemblance to the
cretaceous strata, were immense flat masses of calcareous
tufa, and this, from the impressions of reeds and leaves of the
same kind as those now growing in the vicinity, was evidently
a deposit from land springs, which formerly flowed much more
copiously than at the present day. In association with these
tufaceous deposits, ferruginous masses, with gravel imbedded,
were observed, having all the appearance of the same origin
as the tufa. Coal was discovered in sandstone, and that had
been disturbed only by the undulations of local igneous
irruptions. I t was only when our far-seeing and sagacious
countryman, Sir Roderick I. Murchison, collected all the
rays of light on the subject, from various sources, into the
focus of his mind, that what we had before but dimly guessed,
at length became apparent. Those great submarine depressions
and elevations which have so largely affected Europe,
Asia, and America, during the secondary, tertiary, and quasi-
modern periods, have not affected Africa. In fact, Africa is
the oldest continent in the world. “ I t is unquestionably a
grand type of a region which has preserved its ancient terrestrial
conditions during a very long period, unaffected by