Europeans became more familiar with the African continent as the slave trade developed. The image is of a map of West Africa published in William Snelgraves’ “A New Account of Guinea” in 1754. Snelgrave was captain of several slave vessels that sailed to the coast of West Africa in the first half of the eighteenth century. The map shows some of the major slave trading ports along the coast between the River Senegal and Cape Lopez as well as details about the peoples, cities and states located in the interior of West Africa. The image is reproduced courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.