As both EUROPE, and its adjacent Continent, ASIA, are spread over with inland seas, lakes, or rivers of the most extended navigations, so as collectively to aid the transport of bulky articles of merchandize from one extreme of them to the other; and to form (like stepping-stones over a brook) a more commodious communication: so likewise the northern part of the new Continent appears to have an almost continuous Inland Navigation, which must prove of infinite advantage to the inhabitants, when fully peopled; and contribute to their speedier civilization, in the mean time. But Africa stands alone in a geographical view! Penetrated by no inland seas, like the Mediterranean, Baltic, or Hudson’s Bay; nor overspread with extensive lakes, like those of North America; nor having in common with the other Continents, rivers running from the center to the extremities: but, on the contrary, its regions separated from each other by the least practicable of all boundaries, arid Desarts of such formidable extent, as to threaten those who traverse them, with the most horrible of all deaths, that arising from thirst! Placed in such circumstances, can we be surprised either at our ignorance of its Interior Parts, or of the tardy progress of civilization in it? Possibly, the difficulty of conveying merchandize to the coasts, under the above circumstances, may have given rise to the _traffic_ in _men_, a commodity that can transport itself! But laying this out of the question, as an abstract speculation, there can be little doubt but that the progress of civilization amongst the Africans has been as slow as can be conceived, in any situation: and it has also happened, of course, that the destined Instruments of their civilization have remained in a proportional degree of ignorance concerning the nature of the country. Nothing can evince the low state of the African Geography, more than M. D’Anville’s having had recourse to the Works of PTOLOMY and EDRISI, to compose the Interior Part of his Map of Africa (1749.) It is well known, that those Authors wrote in the second and in the twelfth centuries of our æra. Most of the positions in the Inland Part of the great body of Africa are derived from EDRISI; and it is wonderful how nearly some of the positions agree with those furnished by the present materials. Such was the transcendant judgement of D’Anville in combining the scanty notices that are furnished by the Nubian Geographer!