The discoveries of the Englishmen were soon followed up by important political action by the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, who claimed the whole course of the Nile as part of his dominions, and established stations all along it.  This, of course, led to full information about the basin of the Nile being acquired for geographical purposes, and, under Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon, civilisation was for a time in possession of the Nile from its source to its mouth.

Meanwhile Livingstone had set himself to solve the problem of the great Lake Tanganyika, and started on his last journey in 1865 for that purpose.  He discovered Lakes Moero and Bangweolo, and the river Nyangoue, also known as Lualaba.  So much interest had been aroused by Livingstone’s previous exploits of discovery, that when nothing had been heard of him for some time, in 1869 Mr. H. M. Stanley was sent by the proprietors of the New York Herald, for whom he had previously acted as war-correspondent, to find Livingstone.  He started in 1871 from Zanzibar, and before the end of the year had come across a white man in the heart of the Dark Continent, and greeted him with the historic query, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Two years later Livingstone died, a martyr to geographical and missionary enthusiasm.  His work was taken up by Mr. Stanley, who in 1876 was again despatched to continue Livingstone’s work, and succeeded in crossing the Dark Continent from Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo, the whole course of which he traced, proving that the Lualaba or Nyangoue were merely different names or affluents of this mighty stream.  Stanley’s remarkable journey completed the rough outline of African geography by defining the course of the fourth great river of the continent.

But Stanley’s journey across the Dark Continent was destined to be the starting-point of an entirely new development of the African problem.  Even while Stanley was on his journey a conference had been assembled at Brussels by King Leopold, in which an international committee was formed representing all the nations of Europe, nominally for the exploration of Africa, but, as it turned out, really for its partition among the European powers.  Within fifteen years of the assembly of the conference the interior of Africa had been parcelled out, mainly among the five powers, England, France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium.  As in the case of America, geographical discovery was soon followed by political division.

[Illustration:  EXPLORATION AND PARTITION OF AFRICA.]

The process began by the carving out of a state covering the whole of the newly-discovered Congo, nominally independent, but really forming a colony of Belgium, King Leopold supplying the funds for that purpose.  Mr. Stanley was despatched in 1879 to establish stations along the lower course of the river, but, to his surprise, he found that he had been anticipated by M. de Brazza, a Portuguese in the service of France, who had been