[R-sig-Geo] starting with Rmap

[Laurence Amilhat]

Hello,

I am a beginner in R programming, so sorry for the low level of this post...

I would like to create a Europe map and plot some Informations on it, 
using lat/long coordinates.
I've seen the Rmap project, which seems to do what I want.
The thing is that I can't get started.
I download the packages: maps, mapdata, spmaps, shapefiles
I have a text file for the europe continent downloaded from the World 
data bank, but I don't know how to create a database that can be used by 
Rmap.
So I tried with shapefiles, I have a shapefile for Europe, as is it 
noticed in the tutorial http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/Software/Rmap/
i tried:
 >europe <- shapefile("europe.shp")
Erreur : impossible de trouver la fonction "shapefiles"
= The function shapefile was not found.

Do someone have an idea on what I am doing wrong, or know a good 
tutorial that can be helpfull for what I what to do.

Many thanks,


Laurence Amihat