ANCIENT AFRICANA. 



(April 1, 1893.) 



AFEICA attracts so much attention at the present 

 time, and our knowledge of the great Continent 

 increases so rapidly, that in a very few years the 

 blank spaces found in maps even twenty or thirty 

 years old will all have been filled in, and the 

 mystery which has during the ages shrouded the 

 land will be a thing of the past. Under these 

 circumstances it may not be uninteresting to ascer- 

 tain the state of knowledge when James I. was 

 king that is, about a century and a quarter after 

 the famous voyage of Yasco de Gama, who is 

 generally accredited with being the first European 

 to have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, though 

 in truth Bartholomew Diaz had before his time 

 sailed at least as far as Algoa Bay. 



It may readily be imagined that in 1626 nothing 

 very definite was known of the interior of the 

 country, and it is, therefore, at first sight a little 

 surprising to find the whole of it shown, apparently 

 in great detail, in a map published by that worthy 

 tailor and author, John Speed, which he had 

 " newly done into English," no doubt from a 

 Portuguese source, in the year above mentioned. 



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