The periphery of its coast is the most simple and unbroken in the world. A single glance at the map is sufficient to show this. Nowhere are there the deep arms of the sea and the sinuous shores of other continents. The Gulf of Guinea is all. The entire length of its coast-line is but 16,000 or 17,000 miles, not much more than the circumference of a circle whose diameter is 5000 miles. Its coast-line, proportioned to its area, being the shortest on the globe, gives Africa the least contact with the ocean of all the continents, and subjects it to the least amount of oceanic influences. Thus all individualization of the various phases of life—vegetable, animal, and human—is denied to this continent, whose extremities, on account of the equality of its dimensions, lie equally far removed from the central point. The similar size and configuration of the two lobes north and south of the equator create no strong contrasts, and give rise merely to tropical and sub-tropical conditions. All the phenomena of this great division, the real South of the earth, in which all the culminations of the tropical world are found, are therefore more uniform than in any other part of the world. The characteristics of race remain in their primitive condition, and have made no progress with the lapse of time: this region seems to be kept as the refuge of a yet undeveloped future. Only general, never individual and special development in the world of plants, animals, nor man, appear upon this stationary soil; the palm, the camel, and their natural companions appear in equal numbers in the northern, southern, eastern, and western extremities; the negro is almost exclusively the only inhabitant of the continent. There is no striking individuality apparent in the culture, stature, organization, nor popular characteristics of its various parts. Even a common foundation language gives rise to mere dialectical differences. A mere sporadic coast-culture gives rise to mere exceptions here and there, and these are generally the result, not of inward progress, but of imported foreign conditions. Asia, the Orient, is wholly unlike Africa. On three sides it is entirely sea-girt—the south, the east, and the north; on the west only partly, about 1400 miles. On the west, too, it is connected with Africa, but not in a way to insure any necessary relations between the two continents. But with Europe it stands in the most intimate connection, forming a single body with it, of which Europe is really but a great western peninsula. Europe, the Occident of the Old World, is therefore for less widely severed from its Orient than from its real South or Africa. The history of Asia and that of Europe are woven with a twisted strand; they form a single thread, and their populations are far more closely connected in physical and spiritual organizations than are the people of Asia and Africa.