It has been found that the most of South Africa stands so high above the sea that the influences of a temperate climate are projected far towards the Equator; so that many white men, women, and children are living and thriving on farms in Mashonaland, seven degrees of latitude nearer the equator than the south end of Florida.  This fact will profoundly influence the development of South Africa.  It is to be the home of millions of the white race, the seat of a highly civilized empire, whose business relations with the rest of the world will be to the advantage of every trading nation.  The presence of these millions of toilers will vitally affect the work of developing tropical Africa which is now absorbing such enormous treasure and energy; for South Africa is to be brought by railroads to the very doors of the tropical zone.

It is hoped that such facts as these, even though very briefly stated, may convey broadly a correct impression of the magnitude of African exploration, since its revival about the time that Livingstone died.  It is impossible in brief space to signalize the good work that many of the most conspicuous pioneers have done.  The world rendered tardy tribute to the notable achievements of some of them.  When Rebmann discovered Kilimanjaro, not far from the equator, and told of the snows that crown the loftiest of African summits, it was decided by British geographers that Rebmann’s snow was probably an imaginary aspect.  The snow was there, and plenty of it, but Rebmann died before justice was done to his faithful labors.  When Paul du Chaillu described the Obongo dwarfs of West Africa, his narrative was discredited; but four or five groups of dwarfs, probably numbering many thousands, are now known to be scattered from the lower border of Abyssinia to the Kalahara desert in the far south.  The ancients had heard of the dwarfs, but the geographers of the eighteenth century expunged from the maps of Africa about all that the geographers of Greece and Rome, as well as those of later times, placed on them; and the nineteenth century was slow in crediting the early investigators even with statements that were wholly or approximately accurate.

A curious history is connected with the discovery of the northeastern group of pygmies, a little south of Abyssinia.  No white man had ever seen them, but about fifteen years ago Dr. Henry Schlichter, of the British Museum, collected all the information which natives had given to missionaries, traders, and explorers of the existence of these little people some hundreds of miles from the sea.  Sifting all this evidence, he concluded that these dwarfs really existed, and that they lived in a region which he marked on the map north of Lake Stefanie.  Donaldson Smith had not heard of Schlichter’s paper, and knew nothing of these dwarfs, but he found them in 1895 in the region which Schlichter had indicated as their probable habitat.