604 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916, 



As a contrast to the frigid regions with which we have been deal- 

 ing, let us turn to the most tropical, and in 1860 the most unexplored 

 of all the continents, Africa. One of my earliest geographical 

 recollections is of a map of Africa somewhere in the forties and early 

 fifties on the wall of the school of my boyhood ; begrimed and faded, 

 with the word " unexplored " in large capitals, from the Sahara to 

 the borders of the Cape. I am afraid we boys were not sorry for 

 the great blank without a single name to plague our memories. 



As represented on the best maps of 1860, Africa from about 10° 

 north to about 20° south, was mainly a blank, checkered here and 

 there with conjectural and imaginary features. Livingstone and 

 Burton and Speke had been at work. We see the course of the 

 Zambezi laid down, and vague indications given of Lake Tanganyika, 

 Victoria Nyanza, and Lake Nyasa. The Nile is timidly brought 

 down in dotted lines toward the Equator. A little bit of the lower 

 Congo is shown with many dotted lines of conjectural tributaries 

 joining it from various directions, but no indication given of its real 

 course. Our positive knowledge was comparatively infinitesimal. 

 It is not too much to say that of the 11,000,000 square miles of 

 Africa something like 6,000,000 was practically unknown, and of 

 the remaining 5,000,000 probably not more than 1,000,000 was 

 mapped with anything approaching accuracy. The real inspiring 

 initiative of the modem exploration of Africa undoubtedly rests with 

 David Livingstone, who in the fifties led that ever memorable expe- 

 dition across south-central Africa which placed the great Zambezi 

 for the first time throughout its length upon the map. 



But it is impossible to follow in detail the work of the multitude 

 of explorers who, since 1860, have entirely changed the face of the 

 no longer "Dark Continent." 



The work of the great army of explorers during the half century 

 has changed the face of the continent and filled up the enormous 

 blanks that disfigured the maps of 1860. While the outline of the 

 coast remains as rigid as in the old maps, unindented by any of those 

 great oceanic intrusions which mark the other continents, exploration 

 has revealed a surface much more diversified than the geographers 

 of two generations ago would have led us to expect; while the 

 interior is mainly of a plateau character, the borderlands all around 

 are more or less mountainous, with peaks rising in certain cases to 

 heights approaching 20,000 feet. It has four great river systems 

 and many subsidiary basins; a profusion of lakes, abundant forests, 

 and park lands, and open areas that may be turned to the uses of 

 humanity. Even the greatest desert in the world, the Sahara, has 

 its mountain ranges and lofty plateaux, sometimes snow clad. Un- 

 fortunately the abundant water-supply is not well distributed, though 

 even the Sahara and the Kalahari have underground stores which 



