Africa: to the committee and members of the British association discovering the interior parts of Africa this map is with their permission most respectfully inscribed

Caption

Africa: to the committee and members of the British association discovering the interior parts of Africa this map is with their permission most respectfully inscribed. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

Catalog notes

Large blank areas make this map a revealing record of the limits of European geographic knowledge in 1802. Alongside carefully assembled coastal information, it preserves the nonexistent Mountains of Kong. Caution in one area could coexist with inherited error in another. The unfilled portions were inhabited and known to their residents; they show gaps in this European compilation, not empty landscapes.

Original catalog record, source and attribution