Geographical research has almost exhausted other lands, while here
almost a continent, at least till within a few years, has remained
unexplored. This has not been because no efforts have been made
to break through the thick veil that has always hung over it.
Travellers have been unceasing in their attempts to penetrate into
the interior, and have failed, not from want of energy, but because
of the insuperable difficulties in the way. If they have succeeded
in reaching the shores, they died under the fatal coast fever. If
they have escaped this death, and pressed towards the interior, it
has been only to fall victims to savage beasts or more savage men.
So that African exploration has been, until perhaps within the last
fifteen years, a history of melancholy disaster and sacrifice of
valuable life.

Of late, new and marked success has crowned the efforts made to
lay open this continent to the knowledge of the world.

What has been accomplished will strike with surprise any one whose
attention has not before been called to the facts of the case. Let
the reader take a well prepared map of to-day and compare it with
that from which he studied his lessons a score of years ago. He will
remember how simple and easy to be remembered was the information
to be conveyed by that wide and lightly-colored track which bore
the words, "Unexplored Regions ." It embraced the largest portion
of the whole continent. But this has been encroached upon year
after year, on the South by Livingstone and Cumming, on the North
by Barth, on the East by Barton, and on the West by Wilson and Du
Chaillu, until the discoveries have almost touched each other. Wide
stretches of thousands of miles, given up hitherto in the thoughts