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Show f - "In Darkest Africa" CAROLINE KIRKLAND, in her book on "Some African Highways," says of night I in the Dark Continent: "There is nothing so black as an African night and I think that it is because the earth, being a deep red, offers no reflection to the faint starlight star-light such as we get in other lands. Instead, it swallows up what slight glow there may be, and 1 gives to the darkness a .dim, velvety quality not to be found anywhere else. Overhead the stars glow more brilliantly than in northern latitudes, but they seem to cast no light, and the night is palpable, suffocating, appalling and filled with a nameless horror which is quite indescribable." The cruelties that have been inflicted and suffered in that land through the unnumbered centuries have made their impress upon Nature herself. It forced back civilized man for ages. In other wild countries he has obtained a foothold foot-hold and forced his way inland; but while nations na-tions arose and flourished, ana at last declined and died, that inner darker continent had at most but a fringe of settlements around Its shores. The mighty interior was given up to its savageries; something held the explorer back. It was that way through the centuries, while Egypt arose and flourished, and Anally declined until all her glory had nothing remaining to tell of lier former power but her ruins. The land-hungry nations recoiled before seeking to penetrate those African Afri-can depths. A new world was discovered and all its mysteries uncovered before Africa Anally was searched out and its horrors revealed. Now this writer that Is quoted above tells of its "palpable dai'kness," and cannot explain lucidly the reason. Wo think it is because the land and its people never knew either charity or mercy. They have been as cruel as their own fierce beasts from the first, for how the description of those African nights flts the character and presence of the man who has neither charity nor nv rcy In his soul. We have all seen now and then such n man. Whatever light thei'e may be in him Is never reAected. Children and domestic animals, by a live instinct, shrink away from him. Those near him are uncomfortable and distrust him; he walks unloved through life; ho Is in the world's way always even the stars that shine down upon him can make no impression upon him by their rays. After all, the light of the , world is love, and above all other graces is charity. May be Africa was reserved until the best in the known world should be worn out; possibly the races that have ruled the world so long are by and by to be displaced; possibly a new light is to bo kindled in the continent which has al-waj's al-waj's been dark, and a new civilization is to be born there; but if it is, it will bo when Mercy biulds a throne there and brings with her the two ministers Love and Charity. |