40 



GOOD GEOGRAPHY. 



to that eminent Sanskritist the Rev. J. Wilson, 

 D.D., for any notices of East Africa which 

 might occur in the sacred writings of the Hin- 

 dus. He replied that there were none; and I 

 had long before learned that Col. Wilford him- 

 self had acknowledged his pandit to have been 

 an impudent impostor. 



At the end of the 15th century came the 

 Portuguese explorers, with Strabo, Pliny, and 

 Ptolemy, in their hands, and followed by a mul- 

 titude of soldiers, merchants, and missionaries, 

 who invested the intertropical maritime regions 

 of Africa, east and west. The first enthusiasm, 

 however, soon passed away. The Portuguese 

 were supplanted by the Dutch, by the English, 

 and by the Erench ; whilst Ptolemy and the Peri- 

 plus were ousted by Pigafetta, Dapper, and other 

 false improvers of their doctrines. The Ptole- 

 meian Lakes were marched about and counter- 

 marched in every possible way. The 6 Mountain 

 of the Moon,' prolonged across Africa under the 

 name Jebel Kumri, really became 6 Lunatic 

 Mountains.' The change from good to bad 

 geography is well illustrated by two charts pub- 

 lished in 1860, by H. E. the Conde de Lavradio. 

 The first is the fac-simile of a map in the British 

 Museum, by Diogo Homem, in 1558. It makes 



