The Ancients were not so ignorant about Africa as is often supposed. Ever since that old Phenician fleet went down the Red Sea and appeared, three years afterwards, in the Mediterranean, people knew that it was possible to sail round the Continent. It is said that the great Portuguese explorers derived an impulse from old maps which described Southern Africa as bounded by sea, but in any case the Portuguese are justly celebrated for their African discoveries, for all the knowledge on this subject that came from antiquity was in their days as faint as a half-forgotten dream. No sooner had the Portuguese discovered places like the “Empire of Monomotopa” than they wanted to open them up. They …
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