A System of Geography, Popular and Scientific, Vol. 3: Or a Physical, Political, and Statistical Account of the World and Its Various Divisions (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A System of Geography, Popular and Scientific, Vol. 3: Or a Physical, Political, and Statistical Account of the World and Its Various Divisions

In Africarom the centre of that island devoted of yore, under the symbol of the cross, to the safety of every Christian dag - the British empire enforces from the Barbary States that respect which they pay to no other power. From the foot of the Pillars of Hercules, it carries dread into the heart of the remotest provinces of Morocco. On the shores of the Atlantic it has built the forts of the Gold Coast and of the Lion's Mountain.l It is from thence that it strikes the prey which the Black furnish to the European races of men; and it is there that it attaches to the soil the freed-men whom it snatches from the trade in slaves. On the same continent, beyond the tropics, and at the point nearest to the Austral pole, it has possessed itself of a shelter under the very Cape of Storms. Where the Spaniards and the Portuguese thought only of secur ing a port for their ships to touch at, - where the Dutch perceived no capabilities beyond those of n plantation, - it is now establishing the colony of a second British people; and, uniting English activity with Batavian patience, at this moment it is extending around the Cape the boundaries of a settlement which will increase in the south of Africa to the size of those states which it has founded in the north of America. From this new focus of action and of conquest, it casts its eyes towards India; it discovers, it seizes, the stations of most importance to its commercial pro gress, and thus renders itself the exclusive ruler over the passes of Africa, from the east of another hemisphere.

Finally - As much dreaded in the Persian Gulf, and the Erythrean sea, as in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Archipelago, - the British empire, the possessor of the finest countries of the East, beholds its factors reign over eighty millions of subjects. The conquests of its merchants in Asia begin where those of Alexander ceased, and where the Terminus of the Romans could never reach. At this moment, - from the banks of the In dns to the frontiers of China, - from the mouths of the Ganges to the mountains of Thibet,-all acknowledge the sway of a mercantile company, shut up in a narrow street in the city of London 1.

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