Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Book XIII THE EUROPEAN INVASION OF AFRICA: 1440-1807 CHAPTER I THE DAKK CONTINENT1 The dark continent has been for all the ages a hidden mystery to Europe. In times of greatest ignorance there have been traditions of Asiatic civilisation; there was always a dim knowledge that somewhere in the East another life existed, that other modes of thought found acceptance among the sons of men. And if the size and boundaries of Asia were unknown, they were at least inaccurately guessed at. Men could speak of Cathay and India; some travellers had even penetrated there. But over Africa the blackness of night has ever hung. With the single exception of Egypt and the Eoman colonies along the Mediterranean coast, the whole interior of the continent was unknown to Europe until the nineteenth century. Its condition and resources couldhardly be speculated about, since there were no materials for speculation. Few of its inhabitants had been seen in Europe. Its vast forests, and the innumerable fauna which existed there, were unsuspected. None believed that to the south of the Sahara1 religions grew and faded, kingdoms waxed and waned, rude syntheses of savage empires were evolved and lost. 1 Authorities.—The ancient writers, from Herodotus downwards, contain little more than fable and myth when they treat of Africa. The various works on Egyptology, which are constantly being added to, have elucidated many facts of ancient Egyptian history; but hypotheses are still tentative and dangerous when inquiries are incomplete. Gibbon relates the history of Northern Africa under Roman influence and the Musalman conquests. Bent's Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, Hall, Neal, and Johnson's Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia, and A. H. Keane's Gold of Ophir, are among the many works that discuss the forgotten k...