The continent of Africa is 5000 miles long from the Cape of Good Hope to its northern extremity, and as much between Cape Guardafui, on the Indian Ocean, and Cape Verde, on the Atlantic ; but, from the irregularity of its figure, it has an area of only 12,000,000 square miles. It is divided in two by the equator, consequently the greater part of it lies under a tropical sun. The high and low lands of this portion of the old continent are so distinctly separated by the Mountains of the Moon, that, with the exception of the mountainous territory of the Atlas, and the small table-land of Barca, it may be said to consist of two parts only, a high country and a low.

An extensive, though not very elevated table-land, occupies all southern Africa, and even reaches to six or seven degrees north of the equator. On three sides it shelves down in tiers of narrow parallel terraces to the ocean, separated by mountain-chains which rise in height as they recede from the coast; and there is reason to believe that the structure of the northern declivity is similar, though its extremities only are known—namely, Abyssinia on the east, and the high land of Senegambia on the west; both of which project farther to the north than the central part.

The borders of the table-land are very little known to Europeans, and still less its surface, which no white man has crossed north of the Tropic of Capricorn.