Africa
In 1497, not satisfied that Columbus had reached Asia, King Manuel I of Portugal appointed Vasco de Gama to sail to Asia. Da Gama left Lisbon and after a gruelling 4 months, his expedition reached the Cape of Good Hope. The interiors of Africa remained shrouded in mystery till the 1700s. Mungo Park, a British explorer led expeditions down the Niger River in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Other famous European explorers of Africa include Alexander Gordon Laing who reached Timbucktu in 1862, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke who reached Lake Tanganyika in 1858. However the most well known explorers of interior Africa were David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary and Henry Morton Stanley, a reporter for the New York Herald who went to Africa to find Livingston.
(see expeditions in Africa)
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