Democratic Messenger

It is only a few years since the interior of Africa stood for all that was mysterious in geography. The imagination alone could penetrate the jungles of that unexplored continent, and the question, Where does the Nile take its rise? could not be settled. Now travelers have marched across Africa and cleared up many of its mysteries, and railroads are beginning to penetrate it in various directions. The latest undertaking of this kind is that of the Frenchmen who are to begin the construction of a railroad between the Niger and Senegal rivers. The light of civilization goes with the locomotive, and in a few years more, probably, there will be no longer any mystery in Africa.