The largest, the richest, and the least known of the great continents is Africa. Despite its vast area, numerous tribes, and complicated interests it may be said that its potential influences as regards the rest of the world have been alternately retarded and advanced through the efforts of four individuals. The jealousy of Rome, excited to its highest pitch by the eloquence of the elder Cato, resulted, 146 B.C., in the annihilation of Carthage, an industrial centre whence for five centuries had radiated toward the interior of Africa peaceful and commercial influences. Eight centuries later the hordes of the Arabian Caliph Omar in turn overwhelmed the Roman colony at Alexandria, destroying forever its literary influence by the burning of its great library. Conversely the missionary labors of David Livingstone, from 1849 to 1873, inculcated peaceful methods and cultivated moral tendencies destined to introduce Christianity and develop civilization. Not only did Livingstone, in the eloquent words of Stanley, "weave by his journeys the figure of his Redeemer's cross on the map of Africa, but, scattering ever his Master's words and patterning his life after the Master stamped the story of the cross on the hearts of every African tribe he visited." Initiating routes of travel, suggesting new commercial fields, and organizing stable forms of government, came a man of harder metal, of indomitable will and courage, Henry M. Stanley, who merits the title of Stanley Africanus. A Welshman by nativity, born near Denbigh, in 1840, he came to the United States at the age of sixteen and thenceforth cast his lot with America, and as a citizen of this country made his explorations under its flag. It is reputed that he exchanged his natal name of Rowlands for that of Henry M. Stanley, for a merchant of New Orleans who adopted him; but in any event his early life was passed without the loving and modifying influences of a home, his youth almost equally destitute of those adventitious surroundings that properly mould the character and insure opportunities for success to young men. Thus he stands forth a self-made man to whom strength has been accorded to develop the manhood that God implanted in his soul. Stern experiences in the American civil war, brief life in the far West, and special service in Turkey had shaped Stanley into a reliant, self-contained man when his first African journey came to him, in 1868, through assignment as newspaper correspondent to accompany the British army in its invasion of Abyssinia. He participated in this wonderful campaign, which led him four hundred miles through a country of indescribable wildness and grandeur, across rugged mountains, along deep valleys, up to the fortress-crowned crest of Magdala, ten thousand feet above the sea.