INTRODUCTION. v 
knowledge of the great continent of Africa—that ill-fated 
country, whose unhappy natives, without laws to restrain 
or governments to protect them, have too long been the 
prey of a senseless domestic superstition, and the victims 
of a foreign infamous and rapacious commerce. ‘That 
great division of the globe of which, while we know that 
one part of it affords the most ancient and more stupen- 
dous monuments of civilized society that exist on the face 
of the earth, another, and by far the greater portion, ex- 
hibits at this day, to the reproach of the state of geogra- 
phical science in the nineteenth century, almost a blank 
on our charts ; or what is still worse, large spaces filled 
up with random sketches of rivers, lakes, and mountains, 
which have no other existence than that which the fancy 
of the map-maker has given to them on his paper. So 
little indeed has our knowledge of this great continent 
kept pace with the increased knowledge of other 
parts of the world, that it may rather be said to have 
retrograded. If we have acquired a more detailed and 
precise acquaintance with the outline of its coast, (and 
in this we are very deficient, as the present expedition 
has proved,) and with the position of its headlands and 
harbours, than the Egyptians, the Greeks, or the Romans 
in their time possessed, it may be doubted whether the 
extent and accuracy of their information respecting the 
interior did not surpass ours ; for it cannot be denied that, 
amidst the fabulous accounts, which fear or fancy is 
supposed to have created, of regions within and beyond 
the boundaries of the great desert, many important facts 
are enveloped, which modern discoveries have brought to 
light and proved to be correct. 
For the greater part of what is still known of the 
