First Paragraph

For more than a century after the discovery in the early 1700s of the headwaters of the Niger river in the highlands of northwest Africa, the consensus among European geographers was that it flowed north, ducked under the Sahara desert, and emptied into the Mediterranean Sea. A minority faction believed it flowed east into darkest Africa and joined the Congo river. No one could be sure because Africa was impenetrable and dangerous.

- From The Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley