So, though it is some satisfaction to be able to vindicate the more ancient geographers to some extent, I publish at the end of the series of old maps the small chart which illustrates what we have verified during our late travels. I do it with the painful consciousness that some stupid English or German map-maker within the next ten years may, from spleen and ignorance, shift the basin 300 or 400 miles farther east or west, north or south, and entirely expunge our labours. However, I am comforted that on some shelf of the British Museum will be found a copy of ‘In Darkest Africa,’ which shall contain these maps, and that I have a chance of being brought forth as an honest witness of the truth, in the same manner as I cite the learned geographers of the olden time to the confusion of the map-makers of the nineteenth century.
In the little sketch of ‘Homer’s World,’ which I have taken the liberty of copying, with a few others, from Judge Daly’s[13] learned and valuable contribution to the knowledge of ancient geography, it will be seen that the Nile is traced up to an immense range of mountains, beyond which are located the pigmies.
Five centuries later a celebrated traveller called Hekatæus illustrates his ideas of Africa in a map given below. Though he had visited Egypt, it is quite clear that not many new discoveries had been made. According to him the great Egyptian river takes its rise at the southern extremity of Africa, where the pigmies live.
The next map of Africa that I wish to introduce for inspection is by the “greatest astronomer of antiquity,” Hipparchus, who lived 100 years B.C. His sketch contains three distinct lakes, but situate far north of the equator.
Here follows the great Ptolemy, the Ravenstein or Justas Perthes of his period. Some new light has been thrown by his predecessors, and he has revised and embellished what was known. He has removed the sources of the Nile, with scientific confidence, far south of the equator, and given to the easternmost lake the name of Coloe Palus.