Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 January 1901 — TO FIND POLES. [ARTICLE]

TO FIND POLES.

About All That'i Left to the Now Century. At the beginning of the century Africa was almost an unknown land. The few European colonies scattered along the coast were mostly slave Rations. Egypt and the Barbary Statek were possessed of an eastern civilization, or rather semi-barbarism, but the heart of the Dark Continent was a sealed book to the world. It was a continent of legend and story, but one of which the outside world had no definite knowledge. Napoleon, with his dream of an eastern empire, had made Egypt known to the western world by his Invasion, but the continent as a whole was one of which so little was known that the geographers, after exhausting legend, were obliged in their maps to "place on pathless downs elephants instead of towns." Now nearly every mile of the once Dark Continent has been trodden by the foot of the white man, and the nations of Europe have apportioned among them6elves the territory. Railroads and steamboats now blow their whistles upon the deserts and the rivers and lakes where once were heard only the hoarse cry of the slave hunter or the Shouts of belligerent cannibals fighting for their human prey. Practically a whole continent has been given to the progress and civilization of the world by the opening up of Africa in the course of the last century.—New York Press.