Pari  Jnvst.— %Thc  ililc.
CHAPTER   I.
THE   SECRET    OF   THE    NILE.
"  When  geographers  on  Afric  maps
With  lavage  pictures  filled  the  gaps,
'  Car  uninhabitable  downs
Placed  elephants  instead  of  towns."

Swift.
jlOME  thirty  years  ago  the  modern  world
was  startled  ami  gratified  with  its  first
glimpse  at  the  Lake  Region  of  equa-
torial Africa.  Pigafetta's  map  was  still
covered  with  the  thick  dust  of  centuries;  it  had  to
discovered"  like  the  lakes  themselves.  Or,  if
any  one  in  these  days  had  glanced  at  its  wild  com-
plication of  inland  seas  ami  lake-like  rivers,  he  would
have  been  vastly  amused.  The  more  he  knew,  or
thought  he  knew,  of  geography,  the  louder  he  would
have  laughed.  The  maps  which  our  fathers  used  at
school  mowed  as  a  rule  a  gnat  hlank  occupying  the
interior  of  Africa,  from  the  Abyssinian  mountains  to
th''  Orange  River,  and  from  the  coast  ranges  on  the
i  side  to  the  corresponding  face  of  the  table-land


FIRST  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  CENTRAL  LAKES.  23

on  the  east.  No  geographer  had  soiled  the  pure
white  expanse  with  his  lines  and  figures ;  it  was  the
happy  hunting-grounds  of  conjecture  and  fancy.
