THE EARLY MODERNS. 
399 
diately adjoining to them. About the end of the 
fifteenth century, however, under the patronage 
of the Portuguese princes, a series of extraordinary 
exertions were made, which soon raised Europe 
to a high pre-eminence over the other parts of the 
globe. Although India was to the Portuguese the 
grand theatre of prowess and enterprise, yet in 
their route thither, they also explored and settled 
a large portion of Africa ; and the geography of 
that continent, during the l6th and 17th cen- 
turies, was constructed almost entirely from the 
materials which they furnished. This people pe- 
netrated into the interior chiefly by the side of 
Congo on the west, and Abyssinia on the east, and, 
falling into the usual error of exaggeration, they 
extended these two countries in such a manner, as 
to fill nearly the whole continent, and to hide en- 
tirely from their view that immense space which re- 
mained still unknown. The accompanying sketch 
exhibits the manner in which central Africa is 
delineated by all geographers, from Ortelius to 
Sanson inclusive, and down to the time of Delisle 
and D'Anville.* Sanson's map of I696 does not 
exhibit the smallest improvement over the earliest 
delineations. The exaggeration of half-known 
* See the maps in Ortelius's Theatre of the World, — in 
Dapper's Description of Africa, — in Purchas, Vol. I. and IL 
— and all Sanson's maps. 
26 
