he Solomon Islands, and the Terra Australis. He had reached
the coast of Alaska in June 1786, but after six weeks of bad weather
he had crossed to Asia in the early part of the following year.

Thence he had made his way by the Philippine Islands to the coasts
of Japan, Korea, and "Chinese Tartary." Touching at Quelpart, he
reached a bay near our modern Vladivostock, and on 2nd August 1787
he discovered the strait that bears his name to-day, between Saghalien
and the North Island of Japan. Fortunately, from Kamtchatka, where
he had landed, he had sent home his journals, notes, plans, and maps
by Lesseps--uncle of the famous Ferdinand de Lesseps of Suez Canal
fame.

On 26th January 1788 he landed at Botany Bay. From here he wrote his
last letter to the French Government. After leaving this port he was
never seen again. Many years later, in 1826, the wreck of his two ships
was found on the reefs of an island near the New Hebrides.

CHAPTER XLVII

BRUCE'S TRAVELS IN ABYSSINIA

Perhaps one of the strangest facts in the whole history of exploration
is that Africa was almost an unknown land a hundred years ago, and
stranger still, that there remains to-day nearly one-eleventh of the
whole area still unexplored. And yet it is one of the three old
continents that appear on every old chart of the world in ancient days,
with its many-mouthed Nile rising in weird spots and flowing in sundry
impossible directions. Sometimes it joins the mysterious Niger, and
together they flow through country labelled "Unknown" or "Desert" or
"Negroland," or an enterprising cartographer fills up vacant spaces
with wild animals stalking through the land.

The coast tells a different tale. The west shores are studded with
trading forts belonging to English, Danes, Dutch, and Portuguese,
where slaves from the interior awaited shipment to the various
countries that required negro labour. The slave trade was the great,
in fact the only, attraction to Africa at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. In pursuit of this, men would penetrate quite a
long way into the interior, but through the long centuries few
explorers had travelled to the Dark Continent.

Towards the end of the century we suddenly get one man--a young Scottish
giant, named James Bruce, thirsting for exploration for its own sake.
He cared not for slaves or gold or ivory. He just wanted to discover
the source of the Nile, over which a great mystery had hung since the
day