The unexplored region thus to be opened up to civilization and commerce (other than in human beings) is larger than the United States east of the Mississippi. Around it is a still larger region of partially explored country of unequalled fertility, abounding in great lakes and navigable rivers, and for the most part so high above the sea that the products of the tropics mingle with those of the temperate zone. The cereals, durah, maize, rice, sugar cane, starch-yielding roots and tubers, cotton, coffee, tobacco, spices, gums and caoutchouc, dye-stuffs and medicinal plants, the banana, fig, date, orange, and the vine are among the known products of this region; and all are capable of becoming important staples of foreign commerce. The country is not less rich in coal, iron, copper, gold, and other valuable minerals. The climate, though moist from abundant rain, is less debilitating than India or Brazil; and everywhere, away from the miasmatic coast regions and the marshes of the lower river courses, European explorers have found small cause for complaining of excessive heat or unhealthiness. On the elevated plateaus which cover so large a part of Central Africa, the climate is like that of the sanitariums of India; while among the mountains the finest climates of the world are fairly rivalled. Stanley found in the mountainous region between the great lakes and within a degree of the equator every climatic condition and every element of landscape beauty that could attract and delight a white colony. It was a perfect alpine country, with mountains rising from twelve to fifteen thousand feet, yet free from alpine cold and snow. Countless torrents from the hills watered ever-verdant valleys as beautiful as those of Tyrol, lying under a brilliant equatorial sun, yet with a climate as cool and equable as any European might desire. Further south, among the mountains about Lake Nyassa, the same features are presented on a grander scale: a country aptly described as a second Switzerland of gigantic proportions.