his career
determined by the exploits of Gordon Cumming, which are now, however,
almost forgotten. Mr. F. C. Selous has in our time surpassed even
Gordon Cumming's exploits, and has besides done excellent work
as guide for the successive expeditions into South Africa.

Thus, practically within our own time, the interior of Africa, where
once geographers, as the poet Butler puts it, "placed elephants instead
of towns," has become known, in its main outlines, by successive
series of intrepid explorers, who have often had to be warriors as
well as scientific men. Whatever the motives that have led the
white man into the centre of the Dark Continent--love of adventure,
scientific curiosity, big game, or patriotism--the result has been
that the continent has become known instead of merely its coast-line.
On the whole, English exploration has been the main means by which
our knowledge of the interior of Africa has been obtained, and
England has been richly rewarded by coming into possession of the
most promising parts of the continent--the Nile valley and temperate
South Africa. But France has also gained a huge extent of country
covering almost the whole of North-West Africa. While much of this
is merely desert, there are caravan routes which tap the basin of
the Niger and conduct its products to Algeria, conquered by France
early in the century, and to Tunis, more recently appropriated. The
West African provinces of France have, at any rate, this advantage,
that they are nearer to the mother-country than any other colony
of a European power; and the result may be that African soldiers
may one of these days fight for France on European soil, just as
the Indian soldiers were imported to Cyprus by Lord Beaconsfield
in 1876. Meanwhile, the result of all this international ambition
has been that Africa in its entirety is now known and accessible
to European civilisation.

[_Authorities:_ Kiepert, _Beitraege zur Entdeckungsgeschichte Afrikas_,
1873; Brown, _The Story of Africa_, 4 vols., 1894; Scott Keltie,
_The Partition of Africa_, 1896.]

CHAPTER XII

THE POLES--FRANKLIN--ROSS--NORDENSKIOLD--NANSEN

Almost the whole of the explorations which we have hitherto described
or referred to had for their motive some practical purpose, whether
to reach the Spice Islands or to hunt big game. Even the excursions
of Davis, Frobisher, Hudson, and Baffin in pursuit of the north-west
passage, and of Barentz and Chancellor in se