'Africa has at no period of its history been so flooded with eager seekers after the unknown as at the present hour. Apart from the explorations for commercial and political purposes that are being carried out by French officers in Senegambia and on the Upper Niger and Congo, a Russian expedition under Rogozinzki, and an Italian one under Bianchi and Licata, have been planned to enter the country at the Bight of Biafra. These expeditions will probably be absent several years, for they are organized with the object of crossing through the unknown region between the Congo, the Benueh, and Lake Tchad, and of so eventually reaching Abyssinia. Numerous other travellers are either in the interior or making for the goal as best they can; and Mr. Stanley, in pursuance of his mission on the Upper Congo, is understood to have made a voyage up one of its greatest tributaries, and discovered a hitherto unsuspected lake of considerable magnitude. Another such sheet of water is believed to be not far from the Welle; and now that Mr. Joseph Thomson and Dr. Fischer are far on their way to examine the country between the sea and the northern end of Lake Nyassa, the snow-capped Mounts Kenia and Kilimandjaro promise before long to be removed from the region of myth. Messrs. O'Neill, Johnson, and Stewart's explorations in the same quarter are adding much to our acquaintance with a country hitherto little known, and as soon as the steamer can be carried in sections across the road cut between Nyassa and Tanganyika, the latter lake will become almost as well surveyed as Lakes Huron or Superior. Holub intends boring from one end of Africa to another, and without doing more than mentioning a few of the names which most readily suggest themselves, Böhm, Kaiser, Stecker, Giraud, Aubrey, Hamon, Revoil, and Schuver are among the many eager, and in most cases tried, explorers whose efforts or achievements in different parts of Africa during the past year deserve special remark. The scheme of international stations, started and carried out by the committee presided over by King Leopold, is rapidly joining the East and West Coast by a chain of civilized settlements, where the rude tribes can learn the arts of peace, and the weary explorers find the succour and assistance denied to their predecessors from the hour they entered the Dark Continent. Africa must before long become permeated with what Europeans call light, and, though the accounts of later travellers do not confirm the sanguine estimates of the earlier pioneers, the resources of its great forests, rich valleys, and mineral veins are at least capable of supporting a vastly greater trade than the country at present enjoys.' Whatever may be the future of Africa, Richard Lander's name will always be remembered as that of one of the earliest and bravest of her explorers. [Illustration: (end of chapter vignette.)] FOOTNOTES: