294 EARLY EXPLORERS OF AFRICA 



endless plains of moving sand, waste and wild, without a shrub, a 

 blade of grass, a single cheering or life-sustaining object. 



Such was the wide Sahara, earth's greatest desert, which pro- 

 tected tropical Africa from the inhabitants of its northern belt. Not 

 until the Saracens had con(|uered the Moorish realms was the Sahara 

 practically invaded. The natives of the Arabian desert did not hesi- 

 tate to venture upon its leagues of sand, upon the "ships of the desert" 

 brought from the sands of Arabia. The interior was reached, and in 

 the territory now known as the Soudan several kingdoms were 

 founded. 



Among these were Ghana, now bearing the name of Kano, whose 

 splendor is said to have been unrivalled, and whose ruler rode upon 

 elephants and camelopards, which obeyed his commands as readily as 

 the horse had ])een known to do; Timbuctoo, Kashna, Sakatoo and 

 Tocrur, which our geographers call Sackatoo, Kuku, and Bornou. 

 Lying still farther to the south was the city of Kangha, celebrated for 

 its industries and arts, and which modern explorers have found to be 

 none other than the city of Loggun, which Major Denham said was 

 celebrated for its manufactures, its great ingenuities, and "its witty 

 women." On the southern borders of Soudan lay Wangara and 

 Ungara, where traders are said to have obtained large quantities of 

 gold. But they went not beyond the ])oint where the mountains 

 separate Soudan from Guinea; of the country whicli lay beyond the 

 mountains they were ignorant, and the land beyond the Niger was 

 equally unknown and mysterious. 



About the end of the fifteenth century the maritime nations of 

 Europe began that work of geograi)hical discovery of which the most 

 signal feat was the discovery of America by Columbus. Portugal 

 devoted itself to African research and before the century ended had 

 traversed most of its coast line, and made settlements at various places 

 upon its shores. In pride at the work of his mariners, the King of 

 Portugal assumed the title of "Lord of Guinea." Other nations made 

 settlements along the coast, but the interior was not penetrated, and 

 it remained for the daring explorers of the eighteenth and early nine- 

 teenth centuries to begin the unfoldment of the secrets of the "dark 

 continent," as it was called down to our own days. 



There were many of these daring explorers, but we must confine 



