AFRICA. 



AFRICA. 



K6 



received by the Romans from the Carthaginians, who designated by it 

 the immediate territory of the city of Carthage, comprising the greater 

 part of the basin of the river Bagradas, the coast westward from 

 Cape Bon as far as the mouth of the Tusca and southward to a point 

 about 36 N. lat, which parallel also ran nearly along the southern 

 boundary of the interior. This territory, afterwards called Zeugitana, 

 nearly coincided with the original Roman province of Africa, which 

 however extended southward as far as Thenae, on the coast opposite 

 the island of Cercina. The greater part of the district thus indicated 

 bears to this day the name of Frikeah or Afrikeah. The Romans 

 gradually extended the application of the name, so that in the 3rd 

 century of our era the term Africa included all the Roman territories 

 ' >f the greater Syrtis ; it has since been extended to the whole of 

 this vast continent. The name given to this continent by the Greek 

 and Roman writers is Libya. Herodotus, the earliest extant Greek 

 author who has transmitted to us any information about Africa, states 

 correctly that it is surrounded with water, except at the narrow neck 

 now called the Isthmus of Suez ; and his reason for believing this to 

 be so was apparently the story, reported by himself, of Africa being 

 circumnavigated by the Phoenicians in the reign of Pharaoh Necho, 

 kin;; of Egypt, between the years B.C. 610 and 594. " Necho, king 

 .|it," he says (iv. 42), "dispatched some Phoenicians in vessels, 

 with instructions to sail round Libya and through the Pillars of Her- 

 cules (Straits of Gibraltar) into the northern (Mediterranean) sea, and 

 so to return to Egypt. The Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea, 

 and navigated the southern ocean. When the rainy season came on, 

 it was their practice to land on whatever part of the coast they hap- 

 pened to be, to sow the ground, and wait for the harvest. After 

 reaping it they would again put to sea ; and thus after two years had 

 elapsed, in the third they passed through the Pillars of Hercules, and 

 arrived at Egypt. And they said, but for my part I do not believe 

 the assertion, though others may, that in their voyage round Libya 

 they had the sun on their right hand." There are many serious 

 objections against this statement of the circumnavigation of Africa, 

 one of which, not the least forcible and decisive, is, that Herodotus 

 entertained the notion (and it prevailed long after his time) that Africa 

 did not extend so far south as the equator. This erroneous notion 

 must have been corrected had the voyage in question ever been made. 



Another ancient voyage is somewhat better authenticated. Hanno, 

 one of the ruling men of Carthage, or king, as he is termed, sailed 

 from that city through the Straits of Gibraltar, to establish some 

 'Minnies along the Atlantic coast of the present empire of Marocco. 

 He took with him a large Beet, and 30,000 settlers, whom he left at 

 various places, and then bent his course farther south. He passed a 

 river with crocodiles and river-horses in it, and it has, therefore, been 

 concluded that he went at least beyond the Senegal ; but it is not 

 easy to fix with any precision the extent of the voyage, though it must 

 have been considerably to the south of the Senegal, according to the 

 statement of the voyager. Polybius, the Greek historian, was sent 

 l>y Scipio yKmilianua to explore the same coast (Pliny, v. 1), but it 

 is impossible to state how far he went, from to defective an extract 

 as that contained in Pliny. The time at which the voyage of Hanno 

 wag made is uncertain, though we are inclined to place it before 

 B.C. 500. The voyage of Hanno, which was originally written in the 

 Punic language, has come down to us in a Greek translation, though 

 probably mutilated ; and may be seen in ' Hudson's Collection of the 

 Minor Greek Geographers,' vol. i. 



One of the most curious documents with respect to ancient navi- 

 gation on the east coast of Africa is contained in the ' Periplus of the 

 Erythrean Sea,' which goes under the name of Arrian. This work, 

 which was probably compiled from various log-books and journals, 

 may be assigned to about the time of Pliny the Elder, or perhaps to 

 rlierperiod. The 'Periplus' contains much valuable information 

 on the Red Sea, and also a description of the coasts of Arabia, Persia, 

 the western coast of India, and the eastern coast of Africa. The 

 extreme south point mentioned on the African coast is Rhapta, which 

 is thought to be identical with Quiloa. 



From the tables of Ptolemseu/i, the Greek geographer, it appears 

 that the coast of western Africa was known, probably through the 

 navigation of the Carthaginians and the Romans, as far as to 11 

 N. lat. Nor was the interior south of the Great Desert altogether 

 unknown. Herodotus tells a story, which he heard from some people 

 of Cyrene, of some young men of the Nasamones, a tribe near the 

 present Gulf of Sidra, crossing the desert in a westerly direction, and 

 coming to a great river which ran towards the rising sun, and had 

 crocodiles in it, and black men living on its banks. If this narrative 

 be trustworthy, the river alluded to may have been the upper part of 

 the Niger. It can hardly he imagined that the powerful state of 

 Carthage, which employed BO many elephants in war, and carried on 

 so extensive a commerce, could be altogether ignorant of the countries 

 south of the Great Desert. That the Romans pushed their inquiries 

 in this direction is well known ; for Pliny gives a distinct account of 

 Suetonius Panllinus, A.D. 41, crossing the great mountains of Atlas, 

 and going some distance south ; and in Ptolemams we have an account 

 of a Roman officer, Maturnus, who set out from the neighbourhood of 

 Tripoli, and went a four months' march in a southern direction. This 

 must have brought him into the latiturli> of Timbuctoo, and 

 he neighbourhood of Lake Tchad ; and if the rtory in tn' tin 



Niger or the Joliba may have been known to the Romans. In exa- 

 mining the tables of Ptolemaeus, in which the positions of places are 

 laid down according to their latitude and longitude, we find no reason 

 to doubt their general accuracy along the western coast as far as 11 

 N. lat. He has also given the position of a number of places in the 

 interior, on a river which he calls Nigir ; and the direction thus 

 assigned to the river will come as near the truth as we could expect 

 it to be, even if we knew Ptolemseus's tables to be constructed upon 

 real observation, such as was practicable at that time. 



The Fortunate Islands (now the Canaries) were known to Ptolemseus, 

 and he reckons all his eastward distances or longitudes from them, or 

 from some one point in them. And as coasting voyages had conside- 

 rably extended the knowledge of the east coast of Africa, without 

 however showing any termination of the land, Ptolemaeus concluded 

 that the southern parts of Africa joined the eastern parts of Asia, and 

 thus he converted the Indian Ocean into an inland sea. 



The Greek and Roman writers mention the following remarkable 

 African animals with which they were acquainted : the crocodile and 

 the hippopotamus, both in the Nile and the rivers of Western Africa ; 

 the giraffe, or cameleopard ; the elephant ; the two-honied rhinoceros ; 

 and the ostrich. With the exception of the hippopotamus, all these 

 animals were at different times' seen in the Roman capital. The camel 

 is not mentioned as being found in Africa by any ancient writer, we 

 believe, except Herodotus (vii. 69, 86 ; iii. 9), and it is therefore 

 concluded that it was introduced into this continent by the Arabs. 



On the occupation of Egypt by the Arabs in the 7th century of 

 our era, and the spreading of this conquering people through Africa, 

 the regions south of the Sahara soon became known to them, and felt 

 the influence of their religion and their arms. The Moors have now 

 for centuries been in the habit of sending caravans across the desert 

 to Soodan, as the country south of the Sahara is often called, and they 

 accordingly possessed some knowledge of these central regions long 

 before they were visited by any Europeans. But the accounts of the 

 Arabic writers cannot be said to add much to the information con- 

 tained in the Greek and Roman writers, if we admit that the evidence 

 is satisfactory as to the acquaintance of the latter with the regions 

 south of the Great Desert. With the exception of Leo Africanus and 

 Ibn Batuta, the latter of whom in the 1 4th century visited the banks 

 of the Joliba, it does not appear that any of the extant Mohammedan 

 writers were personally acquainted with Soodan ; and their accounts 

 must therefore have been derived from the merchants who accom- 

 panied the caravans. 



Ibn Batuta, who was a wanderer for 30 years in Asia and Africa, 

 crossed the Sahara from Segelmessa, and visited Sego and Timbuctoo. 

 The work of Ibn Batuta has been translated by Professor Lee of 

 Cambridge. John Leo, an Arab of Grenada, commonly known by 

 the name of Leo Africanus, also crossed the desert in the early part 

 of the 16th century, and visited the cities on the banks of that great 

 river which has given rise to so many conjectures. Leo wrote his 

 work on Africa at Rome, during the pontificate of Leo X. The native 

 custom of selling children for slaves is mentioned by Ibn-el-Wardi, 

 an Arab geographer, when speaking of the natives of the east coast 

 of Africa. 



II. The only portion of the west coast of Africa with which Euro- 

 pean navigators were acquainted at the beginning of the 15th century 

 was that between the Straits of Gibraltar and Cape Nun, in lat. 

 28 40', an extent of not much more than 600 miles. From this 

 point commenced that career of discovery, by the Portuguese, by 

 which tha entire coast of Africa has been made known to the modern 

 world. 



The original promoter and for a long time the director of these 

 expeditions was Prince Henry of Portugal, a younger son of John I. 

 and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt and sister to Henry IV. of 

 England. The curiosity of Prince Henry had been first excited about 

 the unexplored parts of Africa by the accounts, which he had received 

 from the Moors, of the country of Guinea and the kingdoms in its 

 neighbourhood. Animated by the desire to acquire further informa- 

 tion respecting these regions, he took up his abode, in his 21st year, 

 at Tor9anabal, hi the Bay of Segres, not far from Cape St. Vincent, 

 the point of his native country nearest to the coast of Africa, and 

 prepared to devote the remainder of his life, as in fact he did, to the 

 task of achieving the circumnavigation of that vast continent. 



Before this, however, a single ship appears to have been sent out, 

 in 1412, by King John, which had doubled Cape Nun, although other 

 accounts say that this exploit did not take place till 1415, when it was 

 accomplished by two small vessels dispatched by the prince. The 

 navigators advanced for about 60 leagues farther along the coast, 

 which was found continually to trend to the S.W. ; when at last they 

 came upon a point which projected so far into the sea, and was lashed 

 by the waves with such fury, that they were afraid to attempt to pass 

 it, and returned home. This formidable promontory, since known by 

 the name of Cape Bojador (in lat. 26 20'), does not appear to have 

 been doubled till 1432, or 1433, when, after several attempts, it was 

 at length doubled by Gilianez, by whom also its present name was 

 given to it. Meanwhile the isle of Porto Santo, one of the Madeira 

 group, had been accidentally discovered in 1418 by Zarco and Tristan 

 Vaz, who had come upon it in a storm. 



In 1419 the island of Madeira itself (properly written Madera) was 



