All the continents begin with an “A” except one.
Asia is the largest continent.
Africa is the next largest.
But Africa was an “In-the-Way” continent. It was in the way of those who wanted to get to Asia. Every one wanted to get around Africa. No one wanted to get to it. Sailors had been shipwrecked on its shores, but fewlived to tell the tale of jungles of wild animals and wild black men. Africa was called the Dark Continent because no one knew much about it or wanted to know about it. Like children afraid of the dark, people were afraid of the Dark Continent. On one edge—along the Mediterranean Sea—white men lived, but south of that edge was a great desert that men feared to cross, and south of that wild black men and wild animals. But in one corner of Africa, the corner near Asia and along the Red Sea, white people had been living and mighty kings had been ruling for thousands of years. This corner country is called Egypt.
Have you ever seen a man one hundred years old? I have seen a man five thousands years old—a real man, a little dried up man who was once a mighty ruler of Egypt. He did not want to “turn to dust” when he died, for how then could he rise again from the dead at the Day of Judgment? So he left orders that he should be pickled and wrapped in bandages and a mountain of stone placed over his body to make sure it would not be touched or moved away. In fact, he built the mountain of stone before he died, to make sure of that part of it. But you can never tell what will happen to you after you are dead, so in spite of the mountain of stone, herehe is, a ruler of Egypt whom millions obeyed, now in a case in a museum where any one can stare at him, and the janitor dusts his face and moves him out of the way to sweep the floor.