r Denham and Lieutenant Clapperton left Murzouk, the capital
of Fezzan, and made their way to Lake Chad and thence to Bornu.
Clapperton, later on, again visited the Niger from Benin. Altogether
these two travellers added some two thousand miles of route to
our knowledge of, West Africa. In 1826-27 Timbuctoo was at last
visited by two Europeans--Major Laing in the former year, who was
murdered there; and a young Frenchman, Rene Caillie, in the latter.
His account aroused great interest, and Tennyson began his poetic
career by a prize-poem on the subject of the mysterious African
capital.

It was not till 1850 that the work of Denham and Clapperton was
again taken up by Barth, who for five years explored the whole
country to the west of Lake Chad, visiting Timbuctoo, and connecting
the lines of route of Clapperton and Caillie. What he did for the
west of Lake Chad was accomplished by Nachtigall east of that lake
in Darfur and Wadai, in a journey which likewise took five years
(1869-74). Of recent years political interests have caused numerous
expeditions, especially by the French to connect their possessions
in Algeria and Tunis with those on the Gold Coast and on the Senegal.

The next stage in African exploration is connected with the name
of the man to whom can be traced practically the whole of recent
discoveries. By his tact in dealing with the natives, by his calm
pertinacity and dauntless courage, DAVID LIVINGSTONE succeeded
in opening up the entirely unknown districts of Central Africa.
Starting from the Cape in 1849, he worked his way northward to the
Zambesi, and then to Lake Dilolo, and after five years' wandering
reached the western coast of Africa at Loanda. Then retracing his
steps to the Zambesi again, he followed its course to its mouth
on the east coast, thus for the first time crossing Africa from
west to east. In a second journey, on which he started in 1858, he
commenced tracing the course of the river Shire, the most important
affluent of the Zambesi, and in so doing arrived on the shores of
Lake Nyassa in September 1859.

Meanwhile two explorers, Captain (afterwards Sir Richard) Burton
and Captain Speke, had started from Zanzibar to discover a lake of
which rumours had for a long time been heard, and in the following
year succeeded in reaching Lake Tanganyika. On their return Speke
parted from Burton and took a route more to the north, from which
he saw another great lake, which afterwards turned