A TYPICAL VILLAGE IN THE REGION OF THE EQUATOR

northerly of the true negroes, and the blackest. It was in this region that the slave-dealers carried on their trade, and most of the negroes in the United States to-day are descendants of Sudan negroes. Southward, and beginning just north of the equator, is the Bantu family, a collection of tribes of light-colored negroes who are connected rather by a common language than by any physical peculiarities. These Bantus occupy all the remaining part of Africa, except the southwestern corner where live the Hottentots and Bushmen (which see). Tribes of very small, as well as very large, people occur at intervals in Africa, and it is believed that the sight of these gave rise to many of the popular tales of dwarfs and of giants. Of Europeans and Americans there are only as many as are needed to control the numerous enterprises, private and governmental, which have been opened up in various parts of the continent.

Religiously the continent is still "darkest Africa," for almost sixty per cent of the people still hold to the old heathen superstitions which make right, and even necessary, demonworship, fetishism (see FETISH), and barbaric cruelty. Over a third of the whole population are Mohammedans, and the remaining five or

six per cent are Christians of one branch or another.

Division Into Countries. The following statement has reference to conditions just before the outbreak of the War of the Nations, in 1914. There will probably be more extensive rearrangements of territory in Africa at the close of that struggle than in any other continent.

Africa contains two independent countries, Abyssinia and Liberia, but together they possess less than five per cent of its area. Except for a neutral zone of 140 square miles at Tangier, all the rest of the continent is divided among seven European nations as follows:

Belgium. Congo, formerly the Congo Free State; area, 909,654 square miles; population, about 15,000,000.

France. Algeria, Congo, Madagascar, Mayotte, Comoro Islands, Somali protectorate, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Upper Senegal and Niger, Niger territory, Mauritania, Tunis protectorate, Morocco protectorate; area, about 3,000,000 square miles; population, perhaps 40,000,000.

Germany. Kamerun, East Africa, Southwest Africa, Togoland; area, 931,460 square miles; population, about 11,000,000.

Great Britain. East Africa protectorate, Uganda protectorate, Zanzibar protectorate, Nyassaland protectorate, Rhodesia (governed by the