South America have been for the last two hundred years, the recipient of their overflow of population and their chief producer of food. Its capabilities are untried, but we know they are enormous. Explorers within recent years have traversed the continent in every direction, and have brought back reports generally favorable. The Sahara is shown to be by no means the barren waste it has been represented, and the Soudan has had its vast capabilities exploited. Behind the explorer comes the military post and European civilization. As was shown in “The Sun” some time ago, France has since 1854 been extending her acquisitions from St. Louis, on the West Coast, along the Senegal and Gambia rivers, eastwardly into the Soudan, until she now possesses a large area of country, and exerts a predominant influence over a territory comparable, it is said, in extent with that of England in India. It is to consolidate and strengthen her acquisitions that she proposes to add Tunis to Algeria, and it would be doing scant justice to her policy to suppose that the seizure of Tunis is a detached and insignificant incident. Mr. Coppinger narrates in detail the measures being taken to confirm her position in Africa, as against her various European competitors. A notable fact in connection with the Islamic movement, of which so much is said, is the large hold the Mohammedan religion already has in Africa. There are 51,170,000 of this faith to 145,225,000 heathen, 350,000 Jews and 4,535,000 Coptic and other Christians. Even in Liberia, out of a total population estimated by Mr. Coppinger at 1,400,000, fully 1,000,000 are Mohammedans, and of an aggressive character. Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.