st to sight for many months owing to his
earnest longing peacefully to solve the great problem of the waterways
of Central Africa, and thus open up an easy path for the suppression of
the slave-trade. But when, in 1871, Mr. H.M. Stanley, the enterprising
correspondent of the _New York Herald_, at the head of a rescue
expedition, met the grizzled, fever-stricken veteran near Ujiji and
greeted him with the words--"Mr. Livingstone, I presume," the age of
mystery and picturesqueness vanished away.

A change in the spirit and methods of exploration naturally comes about
when the efforts of single individuals give place to collective
enterprise[424], and that change was now rapidly to come over the whole
field of African exploration. The day of the Mungo Parks and
Livingstones was passing away, and the day of associations and companies
was at hand. In 1876, Leopold II., King of the Belgians, summoned to
Brussels several of the leading explorers and geographers in order to
confer on the best methods of opening up Africa. The specific results of
this important Conference will be considered in the next chapter; but we
may here note that, under the auspices of the "International Association
for the Exploration and Civilisation of Africa" then founded, much
pioneer work was carried out in districts remote from the River Congo.
The vast continent also yielded up its secrets to travellers working
their way in from the south and the north, so that in the late seventies
the white races opened up to view vast and populous districts which
imaginative chartographers in other ages had diversified with the
Mountains of the Moon or with signs of the Zodiac and monstrosities of
the animal creation.

[Footnote 424: In saying this I do not underrate the achievements of
explorers like Stanley, Thomson, Cameron, Schweinfurth, Pogge,
Nachtigall, Pinto, de Brazza, Johnston, Wissmann, Holub, Lugard, and
others; but apart from the first two, none of them made discoveries that
can be called epoch-marking.]

The last epoch-marking work carried through by an individual was
accomplished by a Scottish explorer, whose achievements almost rivalled
those of Livingstone. Joseph Thomson, a native of Dumfriesshire,
succeeded in 1879 to the command of an exploring party which sought to
open up the country around the lakes of Nyassa and Tanganyika. Four
years later, on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society, he undertook
to examine the country behind Mombas