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National Geographic : 1897 Sep
Contents
THE UNMAPPED AREAS ON THE EARTH'S SURFACE 255 work for explorers in Asia and plenty of material to occupy the attention of our geographical societies. DARKEST AFRICA Coming to the map of Africa, we find the most marvelous trans formation during the last sixty years, and mainly during the last forty years, dating from Livingstone's memorable journey across the continent. Though the north of Africa was the home of one of the oldest civilizations, and though on the shores of the Med iterranean Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans were at work for centuries, it has only been within the memory of many of us that the center of the continent, from the Sahara to the con fines of Cape Colony, has ceased to be an unexplored blank. This blank has been filled up with bewildering rapidity. Great rivers and lakes and mountains have been laid down in their main features, and the whole continent, with a few unimportant ex ceptions, has been parceled out among the powers of Europe; but much still remains to be done ere we can form an adequate conception of what is in some respects the most interesting and the most intractable of the continents. Many curious problems still remain to be solved. The pioneer work of exploration has to a large extent been accomplished; lines have been run in all directions; the main features have been blocked out; but be tween these lines the broad meshes remain to be filled in, and to do this will require many years of careful exploration. How ever, there still remain one or two regions that afford scope for the adventurous pioneer. To the south of Abyssinia and to the west and northwest of Lake Rudolf, on to the Upper Nile, is a region of considerable ex tent, which is still practically unknown. Again, in the western Sahara there is an extensive area, inhabited mainly by the in tractable Tuaregs, into which no one has been able to penetrate, and of which our knowledge is extremely scanty. Even in the central Sahara there are great areas which have not been tra versed, while in the Libyan desert much remains to be done. These regions are of interest almost solely from the geographical and geological standpoints; but they deserve careful investiga tion, not only that we may ascertain their actual present condi tion, but in order, also, that we may try to discover some clues to the past history of this interesting continent. Still, it must be said that the great features of the continent have been so fully mapped during the last half century that what is required now
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