294 
EARLY EXPLORERS OF AFRICA 
endless plains of moving sand, waste and wild, without a shrub, a 
blade of grass, a single cheering or life-sustaining object. 
Such was the wide Sahara, earth’s greatest desert, which pro¬ 
tected tropical Africa from the inhabitants of its northern belt. Not 
until the Saracens had conquered the Moorish realms was the Sahara 
practically invaded. The natives of the Arabian desert did not hesi¬ 
tate to venture upon its leagues of sand, upon the “ships of the desert” 
brought from the sands of Arabia. The interior was reached, and in 
the territory now known as the Soudan several kingdoms were 
founded. 
Among these were Ghana, now bearing the name of Kano, whose 
splendor is said to have been unrivalled, and whose ruler rode upon 
elephants and camelopards, which obeyed his commands as readily as 
the horse had been known to do; Timbuctoo, Kashna, Sakatoo and 
Tocrur, which our geographers call Sackatoo, Kuku, and Bornou. 
Lying still farther to the south was the city of Kangha, celebrated for 
its industries and arts, and which modern explorers have found to be 
none other than the city of Loggun, which Major Denham said was 
celebrated for its manufactures, its great ingenuities, and “its witty 
women.” On the southern borders of Soudan lay Wangara and 
Ungara, where traders are said to have obtained large quantities of 
gold. But they went not beyond the point where the mountains 
separate Soudan from Guinea; of the country which lay beyond the 
mountains they were ignorant, and the land beyond the Niger was 
equally unknown and mysterious. 
About the end of the fifteenth century the maritime nations of 
Europe began that work of geographical discovery of which the most 
signal feat was the discovery of America by Columbus. Portugal 
devoted itself to African research and before the century ended had 
traversed most of its coast line, and made settlements at various places 
upon its shores. In pride at the work of his mariners, the King of 
Portugal assumed the title of “Lord of Guinea.” Other nations made 
settlements along the coast, but the interior was not penetrated, and 
it remained for the daring explorers of the eighteenth and early nine¬ 
teenth centuries to begin the unfoldment of the secrets of the “dark 
continent,” as it was called down to our own days. 
There were many of these daring explorers, but we must confine 
