Sahara and who on this occasion had crossed the desert from Algeria and had reached the lake via Air and Zinder.
The last ten years of the 19th century also witnessed many interesting expeditions in east Central Africa. In 1891 Emin Pasha, accompanied by Dr F. Stuhlmann, made his way south of Victoria Nyanza to the western Nile lakes, visiting for the first time the southern and western shores of Albert Edward. Stuhlmann alsoLakes and mountains of Equatorial Africa. ascended the Ruwenzori range to a height of over 13,000 ft. In the same year Dr O. Baumann, who had already done good work in Usambara, near the coast, started on a more extended journey through the region of steppes between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza, afterwards exploring the headstreams of the Kagera, the ultimate sources of the Nile. In the steppe region referred to he discovered two new lakes, Manyara and Eiassi, occupying parts of the East African valley system. This region was again traversed in 1893–1894 by Count von Gotzen, who continued his route westwards to Lake Kivu, north of Tanganyika, which, though heard of by Speke over thirty years before, had never yet been visited. He also reached for the first time the line of volcanic peaks north of Kivu, one of which he ascended, afterwards crossing the great equatorial forest by a new route to the Congo and the west coast. Valuable scientific work was done in 1893 by Dr J. W. Gregory, who ascended Mount Kenya to a height of 16,000 ft. In 1893–1894 Scott Elliot reached Ruwenzori by way of Uganda, returning by Tanganyika and Nyasa, and in 1896 C. W. Hobley made the circuit of the great mountain Elgon, north-east of Victoria Nyanza. In 1899 Mount Kenya was ascended to its summit by a party under H. J. Mackinder. The exploration of Mount Kilimanjaro has been the special work of Dr Hans Meyer, who first directed his attention to it in 1887.
The region south of Abyssinia proper and north of Lake Rudolf, being largely the basin of the Sobat tributary of the Nile, was traversed by several explorers, among whom may be mentioned Capt. M. S. Wellby, who in 1898–1899 explored the chain of small lakes in south-east Abyssinia, pushed on to Lake Rudolf, and thence traversed hitherto unknown country to the lower Sobat. Donaldson Smith crossed from Berbera to the Nile by Lake Rudolf in 1899–1900, and Major H. H. Austin commanded two survey parties between the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Lake Rudolf during 1899–1901. Meantime in south Central Africa the Barotse country had been partly made known by the missionary F. Coillard, who settled there in 1884, while the middle and upper Zambezi basin were scientifically explored and mapped by Major A. St H. Gibbons and his assistants in 1895–1896 and 1898–1900. In the same period the Congo-Zambezi watershed was traced by a Belgian officer, Capt. C. Lemaire, who had ascended one of the upper tributaries of the Kasai.
In the early years of the 19th century the first recorded crossing of Africa took place. That crossing and all subsequent crossings had been made either from west to east or east to west. The first journey through the whole length of the continent was accomplished in the two last years of the century when a young Englishman, E. S. Grogan, starting from Cape Town reached the Mediterranean by way of the Zambezi, the central line of lakes and the Nile. Other travellers followed in Grogan’s footsteps, among the first, Major Gibbons.
Additions to topographical knowledge were made from about 1890 onwards by the international commissions which traced the frontiers of the protectorates of the European powers. On several occasions the labours of the commissions disclosed errors of importance in the maps upon which international agreements had beenWork of international commissions and surveying parties based. Among those which yielded valuable results were the Anglo-French commission which in 1903 traced the Nigerian frontier from the Niger to Lake Chad, and the Anglo-German commission which in 1903–1904 fixed the Cameroon boundary between Yola, on the Benue, and Lake Chad. These expeditions and French surveys in the same region during 1902–1903 resulted in the discovery that Lake Chad had greatly decreased in area since the middle of the 19th century. In 1903 a French officer, Capt. E. Lenfant, succeeded in establishing the fact of a connexion between the Niger and Chad basins. Subsequently Lenfant explored the western basin of the Shari, determining (1907) the true upper branch of that river.
In East Africa a German-Congolese commission surveyed (1901–1902) Lake Kivu and the volcanic region north of the lake, R. Kandt making a special study of Kivu and the Kagera sources, while the Anglo-German boundary commission of 1902–1904 surveyed the valley of the lower Kagera, and fixed the exact position of Albert Edward Nyanza. Much new information concerning the border-lands of British East Africa and Abyssinia between Lake Rudolf and the lower Juba was obtained by the survey executed in 1902–1903 by a British officer, Captain P. Maud.
While political requirements led to the exact determination of frontiers, administrative needs forced the governments concerned to take in hand the survey of the countries under their protection. Before the close of the first decade of the 20th century tolerably accurate maps had been made of the German colonies, of a considerable part of West Africa, the Algerian Sahara and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, mainly by military officers. A British naval officer, Commander B. Whitehouse, mapped the entire coast-line of Victoria Nyanza. Government and railway surveys apart, the chief points of interest for explorers during 1904–1906 were the Ruwenzori range and the connexion of the basin of Lake Chad with the Niger and Congo systems. Lieut. Boyd Alexander was the leader of a party which during the years named surveyed Lake Chad and a considerable part of eastern Nigeria, returning to England via the Shari, the Ubangi and the Nile. Two members of the party, Capt. Claud Alexander and Capt. G. B. Gosling, died during the expedition. The Ruwenzori Mountains proved a great source of attraction. Sir H. H. Johnston had in 1900 ascended beyond the snow-line to 14,800 ft.; in 1903 Dr J. J. David had reached from the west to a height he believed to exceed 16,000 ft.; and in the same year Capt. T. T. Behrens, of the Anglo-German Uganda boundary commission, fixed the highest summit at 16,619 ft. During 1904–1906 some half-dozen expeditions were at work in the region. That of the duke of the Abruzzi was the most successful. In the summer of 1906 the duke or members of his party climbed all the highest peaks, none of which reaches 17,000 ft., and determined the main lines of the watershed. Major Powell-Cotton, a British officer who had previously done good work in Abyssinia and British East Africa, spent 1905–1906 in a detailed examination of the Lado enclave and the country west of Ruwenzori and Albert and Albert Edward lakes. This expedition was specially fruitful in additions to zoological knowledge.
Archaeological research, stimulated by the reports of Thomas Shaw, British consular chaplain at Algiers in 1719–1731, by James Bruce’s exploration, 1765–1767, of the ruins in Barbary, and by the French conquest of Egypt in 1798, has been systematically carried out in North Africa since the middle of the 19th century (see Egypt and Africa, Roman.) In South Africa the first thorough examination of the ruins in Rhodesia was made in 1905, when Randall-MacIver demonstrated that the great Zimbabwe and similar buildings were of medieval or post-medieval origin. (F. R. C.)
VII. Social and Economic Conditions
The eagerness with which the nations of western Europe partitioned Africa between them was due, as has been seen, more to the necessities of commerce than to mere land hunger. Yet, except in the north and south temperate regions, the commercial intercourse of the continent with the rest of the world had been until the closing years of the 19th century of insignificant proportions. In addition to slaves, furnished by the continent from the earliest times, a certain amount of gold and ivory was exported from the tropical regions, but no other product supplied the material for a flourishing trade with those parts. To their
