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 THE DARK CONTINENT. 243 to the Nourse on the south, and its chief towns are the ports of Benguela and of St Paul de Loanda, the capital of the colony, which îs a dependency of the kîngdom of Portugal. The înterior of the country had been almost entirely unexplored. Very few were the travellers who had cared to venture far inland, for an unhealthy clîmate, a hot, damp soil conducîve to fever, a permanent warfare between the native tribes, some of which are cannibals, and the ill-feeling of the slave-dealers agaînst any stranger who mîght endeavour to dîscover the secrets of their infamou? craft, ail combine to render the région one of the most hazardous in the whole of Equatorial Africa. It was in 18 16 that Tuckey ascended the Congo as far as the Yellaba Falls, a distance not exceeding 200 miles ; but the journey was too short to gîve an accurate idea of the înterior of the country, and moreover cost the lives of nearly ail the officers and scientific men connected with the expédition. Thîrty-seven years afterwards, Dr. Lîvîngstone had advanced from the Cape of Good Hope to the Upper Zambesi ; thence, with a fearlessness hitherto unrivalled, he crossed the Coango, an affluent of the Congo, and after having traversed the continent from the extrême south to the east he reached St Paul de Loanda on the 3ist of May, 1854, the first explorer of the unknown portions of the great Portuguese colony. Eighteen years elapsed, and two other bold travellers crossed the entire continent from east to west, and after encountering unparalleled difficulties, emerged, the one to the south, the other to the north of Angola. The first of thèse was Verney Lovett Cameron, a lieutenant în the British navy. In 1872, when serions doubts were entertaîned as to the safety of the expédition sent out under Stanley to the relief of Lîvingstone in the great lake district, Lieutenant Cameron volunteered to go out in search of the noble mîssionary explorer. His offer was accepted, and accompanied by Dr. Dillon, Lieutenant Cecîl Murphy, and Robert MofTat, a nephew of Livingstone, he started from Zanzibar. Having passed through Ugogo, he met Living- R 2