lation are Roman Catholics and 1 9/10 per cent Protestants. Over a great part of the continent, notwithstanding European colonization, civilization is at a low ebb, and in the Kongo region cannibalism is still prevalent. Slavery is still practised in many parts and polygamy is widespread. Yet in various regions the natives who have not come in contact with a higher civilization show considerable skill in agriculture and various mechanical arts, as in weaving and metal-working. Among articles exported from Africa are gold and diamonds, palm oil, ivory, wool, ostrich feathers, esparto, cotton, caoutchouc, etc. See paragraph Commercial Conditions at end of this article.

Languages. The languages spoken on the continent may be divided into two great classes, those native to Africa and those brought in from outside; the former including the three great divisions of Negroid, Hottentot-Bushman and Hamitic, the latter Aryan, Malay and Semitic; and the latter again into the pure languages or patois of recent immigrants or traders and those which have become naturalized by time and change into virtually native tongues themselves.

The first division of the extra-African tongues comprises: (1) Pure English in South Africa and Liberia, pure French in Algeria and the scattered trading settlements elsewhere. (2) Four "creole" dialects: the Mediterranean "lingua franca" or trade jargon; the English creole or West African Kru-English; the Cape Verde Islands Portuguese creole; and the Boer and Hottentot Dutch creole. The last three are European in stock, but with much African phonic, inflectional and syntactical mixture and influence. The second division includes the Malay or Malagasy of Madagascar and the Semitic tongues of the northeast. These last are (a) Pure Arabic (the Latin of Africa, the universal language of social intercourse and trade wherever Mohammedanism prevails), including the Egyptian, Sudani, Maghreb and Muscat dialects; (b) mixed, as the Abyssinian dialects, derived from the ancient Geez (q.v.), Tigré and Tigriña, Amharic (originally of southern Abyssinia, but now the chief tongue of the country), Harari of the Galla country, Gurague, etc. All these were brought in by Semitic invaders.

The native African stocks are classed in English books_mainly according to the system adopted from Friedrich Müller by R. N. Cust in his Modern Languages of Africa'; later German Africanists prefer that of Lepsius, the chief difference being on the relations of Bantu and Negro or Nigritic.

1. Negroid. This has three main divisions: (a) Bantu, a pure language. This immense group occupies, with enclaves of HottentotBushman and Pygmy, the whole vast triangle from the Kamerun west and Zanzibar east down to the Cape, or pretty much all Africa south of the equator. All its components (for which see BANTU) have one grammar though different vocabularies; the greatest and perhaps purest representatives of it are the Zulus or Kaffirs and their neighbors the Se-chuana. (b) Nigritic, Negro or Sudan-Negro, between the Sahara and the equator. Ethnologically, the races speaking this group of tongues are the purest types of the Negro stock; but linguistically, they are only classed together from the utter

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impossibility of grouping them with any others, though Lepsius thinks them degenerated Bantu, - a conclusion scouted by others, the affinities being very faint. They are many and to all appearance totally unrelated, so diverse and peculiar are the idioms; some, however, think they show marked characteristics in common. They doubtless represent the oldest races on the continent, wandering in small hostile bands and changing their dialects almost from generation to generation, like all such petty camps with unfixed traditions and no general intercourse; and may well have scores or hundreds of "languages" among them with no traceable connection. (c) The Nuba-Fulah or Ful; sometimes called the Nilotic, from its main seat in the Nile valley from Nubia to the Albert Nyanza, and with isolated tribes farther out, as the Barea and Kunama on the northern border of Abyssinia, and the Masai and Oigob southwest. Others dispute the inclusion of the Fulah, considering it a tongue by itself; perhaps a mongrel, more likely a family as above, which has picked up some Hamitic words. The Dinka, Bari and Shilluk are its chief families along the Nile, the Lur or Shuli and Madi being the last to the south; west of the valley it shades into the Nigritic chaos.

2. The Hottentot-Bushman. This is the language of the dwarf tribes, and its relations to others or itself are vigorously debated. Müller thought it represented two ethnological and linguistic divisions. Lepsius thinks it one, Bantu in race and Hamitic in language; but his conclusions are not accepted. Besides the main stock in southern Africa, this group includes the Pygmy dialects in central Africa; it is denied that they have kept their original languages, but this is true of many others, and the ethnological and linguistic problems have no necessary relation.

3. Hamitic. This includes (a) the Libyan or Berber dialects spoken across North Africa from the Canaries to Egypt - probably changed scores of times from top to bottom; (b) the ancient Egyptian, with the four dialects of its descendant Coptic (extinct save as the ritual language of the Coptic Church); (c) the nonSemitic or Kushite Abyssinian dialects (formerly called Punic, sometimes Ethiopic, which was more generally applied to Geez); as Bishari (see BISHARIN), the ancient Bedja, between Egypt and Abyssinia; Danakil (q.v.) or Dankali, native name Afar, between Abyssinia, Massowa and Obok; Somali and Galla, in their countries; Agau (through Abyssinia, the users believed to be its aborigines, with dialects as Chamir, Quara, etc.); Saho, between Abyssinia and Adulis Bay; Kaffa, Kullo, etc., in the highlands south of Abyssinia. The Fulah group (see above) and the Haussas in Sokoto have some Hamitic admixture. These Hamite tribes are much mixed, geographically or more intimately, with Semitic and Negro tribes or ele

ments.

"Equatorial" is a name given in 1889 by Müller to a group of Negro tribes south of Darfur, of which he wished to make a new family; the Nyam-Nyam and Monbuttu were the chief. All are of a lighter color than the typical Negro, and their languages are more distinctive still. As above said, it is probable that many such groups can be segregated on the best of grounds.

Systems of Writing.- Africa has four living systems (not counting the fossil Coptic or the European used by those races) and has had four now represented only by inscriptions or papyri. The latter are: (1) Ancient Egyptian, passing from hieroglyphics (a mixture of ideograms and syllables) through the cursive hieratic to the more cursive demotic, the ordinary script of business life. A few of the demotic characters are preserved in the ritual Coptic. (2) Ancient Phoenician, the ancestor of all Western alphabets. (3) Ancient Ethiopian, used for the native tongue around Napata and Meroë. It was cursive and borrowed, but it is not known from whence, nor what language it represents. (4) Ancient Libyan or Numidian, borrowed from southern Arabia and read from

the bottom up. There are many inscriptions in it in Algeria and Tunis, some of which have been deciphered; the first was the celebrated bilingual inscription of Takka. The living systems are practically those of the Hamites and Semites, the others being mostly below the grade of civilization which uses such things; and both the former use Semitic systems. The four are:

1. The only one developed in a Negro tribe, and with one exception the only one actually invented and popularly used within historic times: that of the Vei, on the west coast near Cape Mountain, devised about 1834 by Doalu Bukere, a native with a rough knowledge of European printing. It was not an alphabetic system, but a syllabary, with complicated characters like hieroglyphics. It was later used for Mohammedan missionary work, but has been supplanted by the European system, the Christian missionaries refusing to employ it.

2. That of the Touaregs or Saharan Berbers, called tifinaghen. It seems to be a descendant of the ancient Libyan, to which it is similar in reading from the bottom up.

3. The Arabic, used by all who wish to write the great language of Mohammedan Africa, the general medium of social and business communication. It is also widely used to write other African languages: by the Berbers and Suahelis for Libyan; by the people of Shoa for Amharic and those of Harar for Harari; by the Malays of Madagascar and by the Kaffirs.

4. The Amharic, used largely in and around Abyssinia; it is an extension and modification of the ancient Geez or Ethiopic, which therefore we have not classed as dead, any more than the Greek and Roman alphabets can be so called. It is written from left to right like the European languages, the other Semitic systems being the reverse; and the vowels are indicated by modifications of the consonants or marks added to them, making it a semi-syllabic rather than pure alphabetic system. It was borrowed from southern Arabia, and can be traced back to the 4th century on the monuments at Axum, the ancient capital of Abyssinia.

History of Discovery.-Although in Egypt and along the Mediterranean coast (see CARTHAGE and EGYPT) Africa was the seat of remote and comparatively high states of civilization, up to the middle of the 19th century the whole of central Africa was a blank; it is now at least as well known as South America. The civilized nations of the ancient world approached Africa from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; there is reason to believe that till the introduction of the camel in the 7th century A.D.

the desert was an insuperable barrier between the Mediterranean countries and central Sudan.

The name Africa is mythologically associated with Afer, a son of the Libyan Hercules; but this is only an eponym. It is certainly Phonician, and probably meant "nomadic," a term applied by the Carthaginians to the tribes around. It was the name given by the Romans at first only to a small district of Africa in the immediate neighborhood of Carthage, and nearly corresponding with the Roman province formed on the destruction of Carthage. The Greeks called Africa Libya, and the Romans often used the same name. The first African exploring expedition on record is that mentioned by Herodotus as having been sent by Pharaoh Necho about the end of the 7th century B.C. to circumnavigate the continent. The navigators, who were Phonicians, were absent three years, and according to report they accomplished their object. The story has been the subject of much controversy, and was for long generally discredited, but recent authorities of weight have pronounced in its favor. The next important voyage recorded is that of Hanno, a Carthaginian, down the west coast, probably 50 or 100 years later. He passed a river with crocodiles and river-horses, and probably reached the coast of Upper Guinea. Herodotus also mentions some young men of the tribe of the Nasamones (living near the Gulf of Sidra) crossing the desert in a westerly direction, and coming to a great river where they saw crocodiles and black men, but it is doubtful if this could have been the Niger. There is no evidence that the Egyptians knew the Nile beyond the site of Khartum, though they may have sent ships as far as the coast of Somaliland by the Red Sea. Nero sent an expedition up the Nile which seems to have penetrated up the White Nile; and remains of Roman origin have been found some distance into the Sahara. From the navigators and traders that frequented the east coast of Africa, Ptolemy may have learned that the Nile issued from two great lakes about the equator. Mohammedanism was carried into North Africa in the 7th century and very rapidly spread to the Atlantic. By the 10th century the Arabs had crossed the desert, and between this and the 14th century Arab travelers visited central Sudan, the Niger and other regions, and till comparatively recently they were the great authorities on much of central Africa.

The first impulse to a more complete exploration of Africa was given by the Portuguese prince known as Henry the Navigator, who in the early part of the 15th century sent out a series of expeditions along the west coast. These were continued after his death, so that in 1486 Bartolomeu Diaz doubled the Cape and in 1497 Vasco de Gama sailed up the east coast as far as Mombasa, and thence to India. Thus for the first time the main outline of the African coast was laid down. Settlements were planted on the east and west coasts by Portuguese, French, English, Dutch and Brandenburgers, but there is no authentic information that any European penetrated into the interior. Maps of the 16th to the 18th century were covered with lakes and rivers, but these were swept away as unauthentic by D'Anville in the middle of the 18th century, and the interior left a blank. An association for the exploration of inner Africa was formed in London in 1788. Additions were