CHAPTER IX 

 SOUTH-WEST AFRICA 



Royal Geographical Society Ch. J. Andersson Cape Town Walfish 

 Bay Reach Damara Land Hans Negotiations with Namaqua 

 chiefs Revs. Rath and Hahn Wagons brought up 



r \ ^RAVELLERS of the present generation need 

 * some effort of imagination to put themselves 

 into the mental positions of those who were living in 

 1849. Blank spaces in the map of the world were 

 then both large and numerous, and the positions of 

 many towns, rivers, and notable districts were un- 

 trustworthy. The whole interior of South Africa and 

 much of that of North Africa were quite unknown to 

 civilised man. Similarly as regards that of the great 

 continent of Australia. The unknown geography of 

 the North Polar regions preserved some of the earlier 

 glamour attached to the possibility of finding a navi- 

 gable North-West passage from England to China, 

 which inspection of the globe shows to be far shorter 

 than that round the Cape. The South Polar regions 

 had only been touched here and there. The geography 

 of Central Asia was in great confusion, the true 

 position of many places familiar in ancient history 

 being most uncertain, while vast areas remained 

 wholly unexplored, in the common sense of that 

 word. It was a time when the ideas of persons 



