later on, again visited the Niger from Benin.  Altogether these two travellers added some two thousand miles of route to our knowledge of, West Africa.  In 1826-27 Timbuctoo was at last visited by two Europeans—­Major Laing in the former year, who was murdered there; and a young Frenchman, Rene Caillie, in the latter.  His account aroused great interest, and Tennyson began his poetic career by a prize-poem on the subject of the mysterious African capital.

It was not till 1850 that the work of Denham and Clapperton was again taken up by Barth, who for five years explored the whole country to the west of Lake Chad, visiting Timbuctoo, and connecting the lines of route of Clapperton and Caillie.  What he did for the west of Lake Chad was accomplished by Nachtigall east of that lake in Darfur and Wadai, in a journey which likewise took five years (1869-74).  Of recent years political interests have caused numerous expeditions, especially by the French to connect their possessions in Algeria and Tunis with those on the Gold Coast and on the Senegal.

The next stage in African exploration is connected with the name of the man to whom can be traced practically the whole of recent discoveries.  By his tact in dealing with the natives, by his calm pertinacity and dauntless courage, DAVID LIVINGSTONE succeeded in opening up the entirely unknown districts of Central Africa.  Starting from the Cape in 1849, he worked his way northward to the Zambesi, and then to Lake Dilolo, and after five years’ wandering reached the western coast of Africa at Loanda.  Then retracing his steps to the Zambesi again, he followed its course to its mouth on the east coast, thus for the first time crossing Africa from west to east.  In a second journey, on which he started in 1858, he commenced tracing the course of the river Shire, the most important affluent of the Zambesi, and in so doing arrived on the shores of Lake Nyassa in September 1859.

Meanwhile two explorers, Captain (afterwards Sir Richard) Burton and Captain Speke, had started from Zanzibar to discover a lake of which rumours had for a long time been heard, and in the following year succeeded in reaching Lake Tanganyika.  On their return Speke parted from Burton and took a route more to the north, from which he saw another great lake, which afterwards turned out to be the Victoria Nyanza.  In 1860, with another companion (Captain Grant), Speke returned to the Victoria Nyanza, and traced out its course.  On the north of it they found a great river trending to the north, which they followed as far as Gondokoro.  Here they found Mr. (afterwards Sir Samuel) Baker, who had travelled up the White Nile to investigate its source, which they thus proved to be in the Lake Victoria Nyanza.  Baker continued his search, and succeeded in showing that another source of the Nile was to be found in a smaller lake to the west, which he named Albert Nyanza.  Thus these three Englishmen had combined to solve the long-sought problem of the sources of the Nile.