194 LAKE KIVU 



to bring the Mfumbiro volcanoes within our territory, 

 in part consideration of the cession to Germany 

 of Heligoland and Kilimanjaro. Latterly we seem 

 to have given up all claims to the district, doubtless 

 for some good reason ; but one cannot help regretting 

 the fact, as the possession of the group would have 

 given us access to the waters of Lake Kivu, and 

 so would have greatly reduced the distance dividing 

 our northern and southern possessions in Africa. 

 Except for the seventy or eighty miles which 

 separate Lake Kivu from Tanganyika, it would 

 have been possible, by using the lakes as water- 

 ways, to travel under the British flag from north 

 to south in Africa. It is, perhaps, not being over- 

 sanguine to hope that, when the Congo Free State 

 is put upon a permanent footing, we shall be able 

 to secure this strip of territory. I can see a day, 

 in the not very distant future, when Messrs. Cook 

 will issue through tickets to Kivu and Tanganyika ; 

 there will be a funicular railway up one of the 

 volcanoes to an hotel on the top, and very likely 

 a hydropathic establishment near one of the hot 

 springs. 



At the time of our visit in 1906 — and it is probably 

 in the same condition still — we found Lake Kivu 

 a bone of contention between the Congo and 

 Germany, in the same way that Lake Albert Edward 

 is between the Congo State and Uganda. Formerly 

 the two States agreed that the geographical line, by 

 which these territories are divided, ran from north to 



