在两百年前,辽阔而强大的非洲各帝国已经存在了一千多年,但欧洲人对非洲除了海岸附近几个地区外,几乎一无所知。早期欧洲探险家不喜欢非洲,因为安全港口不易寻找,沙漠丛林遍布,有些河流下游是大沼泽三角洲,有些河流被瀑布阻断,无法航行。十六世纪后, Two hundred years ago, vast and powerful African empires had existed for more than a thousand years, but Europeans knew almost nothing about Africa except in the vicinity of the coast. Early European explorers did not like Africa because of the hard-to-find safe harbor, the desert jungles, and the lower marshes of some rivers in the swamp delta. Some rivers were blocked by the falls and could not sail. After the sixteenth century,