Cashmeer, where, as in those happy regions, spring holds a perpetual
reign.

In regard to the population, as well as its geographical character,
Africa naturally divides itself into two great portions, north and
south of the mountains of Kong and the Jebel el Komar, which give
rise to the waters of the Senegal, the Niger and the Nile. To the
north of this line, Africa is ruled, and partially occupied by
foreign races, who have taken possession of all the fertile
districts, and driven the aboriginal population into the mountains
and deserts of the interior. It is consistent with general
experience, that in proportion as civilization extends itself, the
aboriginal race of the natives become either extinct, or are driven
farther and farther into the interior, where they in time are lost
and swept from the catalogue of the human race.

South of this line, we find Africa entirely peopled with the Negro
race, who alone seem capable of sustaining the fiery climate, by
means of a redundant physical energy scarcely compatible with the
full development of the intellectual powers of man. Central Africa is
a region distinguished from all others, by its productions and
climate, by the simplicity and yet barbarian magnificence of its
states; by the mildness and yet diabolical ferocity of its
inhabitants, and peculiarly by the darker nature of its
superstitions, and its magical rites, which have struck with awe
strangers in all ages, and which present something inexplicable and
even appalling to enlightened Europeans; the evil principle here
seems to reign with less of limitation, and in recesses inaccessible
to white men, still to enchant and delude the natives. The common and
characteristic mark of their superstition, is the system of Fetiches,