Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/267

Rh 245 AFEI C A vast continent, thougn associated from the dawn J_ of civilisation with traditions and mysteries of the most stimulating kind, has remained until recently one of the least known, and, both commercially and politically, one of the least important of the great divisions of the globe. The knowledge of Africa possessed by the ancients was very limited, owing principally to its physical construc tion. The great desert, which in a broad belt stretches quite across the continent, forbade every attempt to pass it until the introduction of the camel by the Arabs. The want of any known great river, except the Nile, that might conduct into the interior, contributed to confine the Greek and Koman colonists to the habitable belt along the north ern coast. The Phoenicians are known to have formed establishments on the northern coast of Africa at a very early period of history, probably not less than 3000 years ago ; and the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses dates as far back as the year B.C. 525. We may consider, therefore, the coasts of Egypt, of the Red Sea, and of the Mediter ranean, to have been settled and well known to the ancient Asiatics, who were constantly passing the narrow isthmus which divided their country from Africa and led them im mediately from parched deserts into a fertile valley, watered by a magnificent river. But whether they were much or little acquainted with the western coast, which bounds the Atlantic, and the eastern coast, washed by the Indian Ocean, is a question that has exercised the research and ingenuity of the ablest scholars and geographers, and has not yet been satisfactorily answered. This question being one of curiosity rather than utility, we shall only state the case, and the results of the several inquiries, without entering into the merits of the arguments advanced by the different parties. We are told by Hero dotus, that Necho, king of Egypt, sent out an expedition under the command of certain Phoenician seamen, for the purpose of circumnavigating Africa ; and that, on their re turn, they asserted that they had accomplished this under taking. Few of the ancient writers give credit to the story; but, among the moderns, the Abbe&quot; Paris and Montesquieu have contended that this voyage was actually performed. Isaac Vossius and D Anville have strong doubts ; and Dr Vincent and M. Gosselin maintain that such an expedition, at such a period, exceeds all the means and resources of navigation, then in its infancy. Last of all comes Major Renuel, who, in his elucidation of the geography of Hero dotus, has done more than all the rest in clearing away the doubts of history ; and he argues the possibility of such a voyage, from the construction of their ships, with flat bot toms and low masts, enabling them to keep close to the land, and to discover and enter into all the creeks and har bours which any part of the coast might present. At all events, one thing is evident : if such an expedition ever circumnavigated the African continent, the fruits of it have nearly, if not entirely, perished. About half a century after this supposed expedition, the account of another voyage, down the western coast, is con tained in the Periplus of Hanno, which has also called forth many learned and elaborate discussions among modern geo graphers, some of whom would carry Hanno to the Bight of Benin, others only to Sherbro Sound or the river Nun in lat. 28 N. The extent to which ancient discovery proceeded along the eastern coast of Africa, has divided the opinion of the learned nearly as much as its progress on the western coast. Delisle, Huet, and Bochart, made the discovery of the coast to extend as far south as Mozambique and Madagascar. D Anville could trace such discovery no farther than to Cape Delgado; and M. Gosselin contends that the ancients never proceeded down the coast beyond Brava. But Dr Vincent, who has entered more profoundly into the subject than any of his predecessors, and brought a great fund of learning to bear on the question, in his Periplus of the Erythrcan Sea, has with great plausibility extended these boundaries to Mozambique and to the island of Madagascar. Sketch Map of Africa. Egypt, under the Ptolemies, the great patrons of science and promoters of discovery, possessing the advantage of the only great river which falls from the African continent into the Mediterranean, made no progress beyond its an cient boundaries ; and though the Romans, who subse quently possessed Egypt, penetrated beyond the limits of their own dependencies, they extended their discoveries no further than Fezzan in one direction, and, at a later period, beyond Nubia as far as Abyssinia, and the regions of the Upper Nile. We know nothing of the progress made by the Carthaginians in the discovery of Interior Africa ; but The Ca although it has been asserted that their merchants had thagini reached the banks of the interior river, which we call the Kawara or Niger, they have left nothing on record that will warrant such a supposition. The story told by Hero dotus, of some Nasamonians crossing the desert, and arriv ing at a large river, can only be applicable to some western arm of the Nile. The people from whom we derive the The Ai first information concerning the interior of Northern Africa are the Arabs, who, by means of the camel, were able to penetrate across the great desert to the very centre of the continent, and along the two coasts as far as the Senegal and the Gambia ou the west, and to Sofala on the east. On this latter coast they not only explored to an extent far beyond any supposed limits of ancient discovery, but planted colonies at Sofala, Mombas, Melinda, and at various other places. The 15th century produced a new era in maritime dis- Portu- covery. The voyages of the Portuguese were the first to S uese - give anything like an accurate outline of the two coasts,