STANLEY AND THE MAP OF AFRICA. 289 



tbe Nile, and from the Gaboon to the east coast. Mr. Du Cbaillu found 

 them iu the forests of the west30 years ago, and away south on the great 

 Sankuru tributary of the Congo Major Wissman and his fellow explo- 

 rers met them within the past few years. They seem to be the rem- 

 nants of a primitive po})uhition rather than the stunted examjjles of the 

 normal negro. Around the villages in the forest wherever clearings 

 had been made the ground was of the richest character, growing croj)s 

 of all kinds. Mr. Stanley has always maintained that in the high lands 

 around the great lakes will be found the most favorable region for Eu- 

 ropean enterprise; and if in time much of the forest is cleared away, 

 the country between the Congo and Lake Albert might become the 

 granary of Africa. 



To the geographer, however, the second half of the expedition's work 

 is fuller of interest than the tirst. Some curious problems had to be 

 solved in the lake region, i)roblems that had given rise to much discus- 

 sion. When in 1864 Sir Samuel Baker stood on the lofty escarpment 

 that looks down on the east shore of tlie Albert Nyauza, at Vacovia, 

 the lake seemed to him to stretch inimitably to the south, so that for 

 long it appeared on our maps as extending beyond 1 degree south lat- 

 itude. When Stanley, many years later, on his first great expedition, 

 after crossing from Uganda, came upon a great bay of water, he 

 was naturally inclined to think that it was a part of Baker's lake, and 

 called it Beatrice Gulf. But Gessi and Mason, members of Gordon 

 Pasha's stafit", circumnavigated the lake later on and found that it ended 

 more than a degree north of the equator. So when Stanley published 

 his narrative he made his "Beatrice Gulf" a separate lake lying to the 

 south of the Albert Nyanza. Mr. Stanley saw only a small portion of 

 the southern lake, Muta Nzige, but in time it expanded and expanded on 

 our maps until there seemed some danger of its being joined on to Lake 

 Tanganyika. Emin himself, during his 12 years' stay in the Sudan, did 

 something towards exploring the Albert Nyanza, and found that its 

 southern shore was fast advancing northward, partly owing to sediment 

 brought down by a river, and partly due to the wearing away of the rocky 

 bed of the Upper Nile, by which much water escaped and the level of 

 the lake subsided. Thus, when Baker stood on the shore of the lake 

 in 1864, it may well have extended many miles farther south than it 

 does now. But where did the river come from that Mason and Emin 

 saw running into the lake from the south ? As was pointed out above, 

 Stanley at tirst thought it could not come from his own lake to the 

 south, which he believ^ed must send its waters to the Congo. But all 

 controversy has now been ended. During the famous exodus of the 

 1,500 from Kavilli to the coast, the intensely interesting country lying 

 between the northern lake, Albert, and the southern lake, now named 

 Albert Edward, was traversed. Great white, grassy i)lains stretch away 

 south from the shores of Lake Albert, which under the glitter of a trop- 

 ical sun might well be mistaken for water ; evidently they had been 

 H. Mis. 129 19 



