PREFACE. 
The progress of discovery in Africa has 
long been an object of peculiar interest ; 
nor can it be difficult to trace the sources 
from which that interest has arisen. This 
immense Continent contains in its bosom a 
number of extensive, populous, and even 
civilized kingdoms, all of them imperfectly 
known, and of some of which even the names 
have not yet reached Europeans. Equally 
remarkable is the obscurity which involves 
the grandest features of its physical geo- 
graphy. Africa, therefore, is still humbling 
to that pride of knowledge, which Europe 
very justly indulges with regard to the other 
quarters of the globe. An extraordinary 
^e^\, however, to remove this reproach, has 
