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CHAPTER II. 
Before I quit this Settlement I shall give a short abstract of its 
history, to which a few remarks on its present situation may with 
propriety be subjoined, and this, I hope, will not be trespassing 
too far on the attention of the reader. Previously to the discovery 
of the Cape of Good Hope, and the arrival of the Portuguese in 
the Eastern seas, the knowledge possessed in Europe respecting 
this coast was extremely unsatisfactory, being almost entirely 
drawn from the vague accounts of Ptolemy, and the obscure 
notice of it in the Periplus of the Erythrean sea, a fact that 
appears evident from a curious map, now before me,* which is 
entirely built on those authorities, and retains all their errors. 
The Arabs, it is certain, had for centuries before been intimately 
conversant with both its ports and their value, having established 
settlements on several points of the continent, and some of the 
islands adjacent, that gave them the complete command of its 
resources and its commerce ; but their accounts of it were at that 
time unknown in Europe, and even those, with which we have 
since become acquainted, are most of them, like the general mass 
of Arabian geography, short, confused and written with a very 
inaccurate knowledge of the actual, as well as relative, positions 
of the countries described. 
* Tabula quarta de Afrlc^ in Geographic di Francesco Berlinghieri Fiorentino—pub- 
Jisliedj according to J. G. Bmnet in his Manuel du Libraire, in about 1480. 
