Book Description

Excerpt from The Gold Regions of South Eastern Africa The region described in the following pages was, until the last few years, when the explorations of Herr Much, Erskine, Elton, Chapman, and others somewhat dispersed the cloud of mystery in which it was enveloped, essentially a mythical one. Its geographical features were generally depicted in the manner described by Swift - "So Geographers in Afric Maps With savage pictures fill their gape, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants instead of towns." The name of Monomotapa (which means a place from which something valuable is derived), is seldom used except as a mediaeval geographical term, found in old school geographies and obsolete atlases. It was supposed by its Arab and Portuguese discoverers and conquerors to include all the regions south of the Zambesi, extending to the country of the Kafirs (Pays de Caffres) or even to the banks of the Orange River, the Vigita Magna of the old geographers, and the large towns supposed to exist in this region (shaken over the old Maps as if from a pepper castor) are frequently alluded to in the early records of the Cape Colony. We learn from these records, however, that several exploring parties were sent in search of rich countries during the latter half of the seventeenth century, but none of them succeeded in penetrating so far into the interior. The Seaboard or Coast Region was known under the name it still bears, that of "Sofala," which signifies in Arabic a plain or low country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."