Africa

Come on, Felix, come on, my dear Félicie, let’s continue our journey. We will travel through Africa; from which side shall we step in? I notice that it is almost completely surrounded by water. However it is not an island. Put the chart in front of you, we must take a look at it; because without charts, studying geography is a waste of time and effort. Ah! Felix put his finger on the small path which leads from Asia to Africa. This only passage, which is pressed on one side by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, and on the other by those of the Red Sea – or Arabian Gulf – is called the isthmus of Suez; it is only fifty (eighty kilometers) miles wide. Thus Africa is a peninsula, the largest in the world, and shaped roughly as a triangle. It is four thousand two hundred and twenty-five miles (six thousand and eight hundred kilometers) long , and four thousand and one hundred miles (six thousand and six hundred kilometers) wide in its broader part.
This part of the earth looks only very little like that in which we live. Africa is the empire of the sun. Its rays fall vertically on most of this huge country. Thus, in some places, the heat is almost unbearable for Europeans. It is also there, and in consequence of this extreme heat, that those vast regions called deserts are to be seen. They only have burning sand plains to offer to travellers, without rivers to refresh them and without trees to protect them from the sun. But, in the areas where rivers and brooks run, fertility is admirable; plants are filled with strength, fruit are delicious.

Extract from Little journey around the world by P. Blanchard, 1846.