INTRODUCTION. v 



knowledcre 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 



