Cairo in 1773. His account of his journey and the increasing interest in the slave traffic led to the organization, in 1788, of the African Association, expressly intended to promote the exploration of the unknown parts of the continent. In 1795 the association dispatched Mungo Park (q.v.), a young Scotchman, to the mouth of the Gambia, to explore the interior and to find the Niger, on which was supposed to be the negro city of Timbuktu. Passing up the Gambia, Park, after many adventures, reached the Niger, which he traced for a considerable distance along its middle course. He returned to England, but again set forth in 1805, intending to travel overland to the Niger, and by sailing down that stream prove his theory that it was identical with the river which was known at the mouth as the Congo. He was drowned at Bussa, with one of his companions, and all the other members of the party succumbed to fever.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Brazilian F. J. de Lacerda in 1797 started from the Zambezi to cross the continent from east to west, but died near Lake Moero. Other Portuguese explorers traversed this region from both sides during the next thirty-five years. The stories that Park had heard and published about the mysterious city of Timbuktu aroused great curiosity. The city was reached in 1811 by a British seaman named Adams, who had been wrecked on the Moorish coast and carried inland as a slave, but was ransomed by the British consul at Mogador. In 1822 Major Denham and Lieutenant Clapperton (q.v.) attempted the trans-Saharan route to Timbuktu. From Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan, they made their way to Lake Chad and thence to Bornu, adding, in a second trip by Clapperton from Benin to the Niger, some two thousand miles of route to the known geography of West Africa. In 1826 Timbuktu was reached by Major Laing (q.v.), who was murdered there. In 1828 René Caillié reached the far-famed metropolis, and his report aroused widespread interest, one sign of which was the prize poem with which Tennyson began his public career. The doubtful geographical problem of the course and mouth of the Niger was finally solved, 1830-34, by the Lander brothers. At this time the exploration of the Nile was carried on under the auspices of Mehemet Ali, its course being traced almost to the equator. In 1847 the German missionaries Krapf and Rebmann discovered the peaks of Kilimanjaro and Kenia.
The middle of the nineteenth century marked the introduction of the distinctly scientific spirit into African exploration. Heretofore the thirst for adventure, the desire to develop a profitable trade, and a somewhat sentimental humanitarianism had been the chief motives of the expeditions. The era of systematic scientific exploration was ushered in by Dr. Heinrich Barth (q.v.), a German in the English service. The primary object of his activity was the opening of trade with Central Africa. He left Tripoli early in 1850 with James Richardson, who died soon after leaving Bornu, where the party had separated. Overweg, another of the leaders, was the first European to sail on Lake Chad, and died in 1852. Barth, for four years, conducted extensive explorations in the heart of Africa. From Lake Chad he crossed Haussaland to the Niger, thence across country to Timbuktu, thence back to Say on the Niger, to Sokoto, to Kukawa in Bornu, and across the desert to Tripoli, whence he returned to England with the most valuable contribution yet made to the geographical knowledge of interior Africa. His voluminous works are of the highest value. Before Barth started from the north, another of the greatest of African explorers, David Livingstone (q.v.), had unostentatiously begun his remarkable career. He had settled in 1841 in Bechuanaland, and, gradually pushing northward, discovered Lake Ngami in 1849. In 1851 he arrived at the Zambezi. He prepared himself thoroughly for more extended work, and went to the Zambezi again in 1852, followed up the river almost to its source, crossed to Angola, and then returned and followed the Zambezi to its mouth. He went to London in 1856. Burton (q.v.) and Speke (q.v.) explored Somaliland in 1854, and in 1856 led an expedition under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society, which discovered Tanganyika and the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza, which Speke and Grant explored from 1860 to 1864. Numerous Austrian, Italian, German, and English explorers had been working in the Nile region. Sir Samuel Baker explored the Abyssinian branches of the Nile, met Speke and Grant in 1864, and discovered the Albert Nyanza and its connection with the Nile. Livingstone, between 1858 and 1864, explored the River Shire and discovered Lake Nyassa. He renewed his work in 1866, going from the Ruvuma River to Nyassa, Tanganyika, Moero, the Luapula River, and Bangweolo, where he arrived in 1868. Thence he went to Tanganyika and Nyangwe on the Upper Congo, which he called the Lualaba. At Ujiji a relief expedition sent by the New York Herald under H. M. Stanley (q.v.) met him in 1871. Livingstone soon returned to Lake Bangweolo, where he died in 1873. Another relief expedition sent out by the Royal Geographical Society in 1873 under Lieutenant Cameron, starting at Zanzibar, learned of Livingstone's death, but went on, mapped Lake Tanganyika, found that the Lualaba was really the Congo, and reached Benguela in 1875, having crossed the continent.
While the solution of the problem of the sources of the Nile was being achieved, important accessions were made to the knowledge of the geography of Western Africa. Du Chaillu explored the country back of the Gabun and the region of the Ogowe, and Burton in 1861 scaled the Peak of Kanierun.
Dr. Gerhard Rohlfs (q.v.), a German serving in the foreign legion in Algeria, began to make explorations in Algeria and Morocco about 1860, and in 1866 succeeded in making the journey across the desert to the Gulf of Guinea. Another German, Dr. Nachtigal (q.v.), intrusted by the Prussian Government with a mission to the Sultan of Bornu, started from Tripoli in 1868, explored the mountains in the central Sahara, and the whole of the eastern Sahara and Sudan. In 1875 Stanley circumnavigated the two great lakes, Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika, crossed to the Congo, embarked upon that river at Nyangwe, in 1876, and followed its course to the Atlantic, which he reached in August, 1877. Schweinfurth (q.v.), a native of Riga, ascended the White Nile in 1868, discovered the Welle River, and returned to Egypt in 1872, having accumulated a large amount of information. Leopold II., King of the Belgians, took an active interest in the work going on in Africa, and in 1876 organized the International African Association, in which most of the European countries were associated. Several geographical and
