region--the
"Dark Continent," as it was called. In the fifteenth century the
Portuguese sailors crept along the western coast, and afterwards along
the south, as we have seen, past the Cape of Good Hope. But the
interior of the continent remained for long an unexplored region.

The Dutch had, very soon after the discovery of the Cape, made a
settlement there, which was known as _Cape Colony_. This was
afterwards won by the English; but many Dutchmen still stayed there,
and though, since the Boer War, when the Boers, or Dutch, in South
Africa tried to win their independence, the whole of South Africa
belongs to the British Empire, still there are naturally many Dutch
names given by the early Dutch settlers. Some of these became very
well known to English people in the Boer War. _Bloemfontein_ is one of
these names, coming from the Dutch word for "spring" (_fontein_), and
that of Jan Bloem, one of the farmers who first settled there. Another
well-known place in the Transvaal, _Pietermaritzburg_, took its name
from the two leaders who led the Boers out of Cape Colony when they
felt that the English were becoming too strong there. These leaders
were Pieter Retief and Georit Maritz. This movement of the Boers into
the Transvaal was called the "Great Trek," _trek_ being a Dutch word
for a journey or migration of this sort. Since the days of the Boer
War this word has been regularly used in English with this same
meaning. Like the English settlers in America, the Dutch settlers in
South Africa sometimes gave the names of places in Holland to their
new settlements. _Utrecht_ is an example of this.

Up to the very end of the nineteenth century no European country
besides England had any great possessions in Africa. The Portuguese
still held the coast lands between Zululand (so called from the
fierce black natives who lived there) and Mozambique. Egypt had come
practically under British rule soon after the days of Napoleon, and in
the middle of the nineteenth century the great explorers Livingstone
and Stanley had explored the lands along the Zambesi River and a great
part of Central Africa. Stanley went right across the centre of the
continent, and discovered the lake _Albert Edward Nyanza_. _Nyanza_ is
the African word for "lake," and the name Albert Edward was given in
honour of the Prince Consort. _Victoria Nyanza_, so called after Queen
Victoria, had been discovered some years before. It was all these
discoveries which led