Up to 1884, although there had been no definite annexation of territory, British influence was extending in every direction, as British explorers ventured farther and farther into the interior--adventurous spirits stirred by the reports of the Arabs of the great lakes existing in what was then unknown Africa. Central Africa remained a no-man's-land, inhabited only by aborigines, and under no control whatsoever excepting that exercised by the Arab leaders of marauding and slave-trading expeditions, whose principal commercial object was ivory--white and black. To mention but a few names, Burton, Speke, Grant, Baker, all added to the world's knowledge of the Dark Continent, and mapped out the region about Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria and Albert Nyanza; Burton, indeed, penetrated far enough west to plant a British flag upon the majestic mountains of the Kamerun, above the Gulf of Guinea. Their wanderings were inspired by the spirit of adventure innate in the British, and undertaken with no sordid motive; while the results of their labours became the property of the civilised world. In the course of their explorations the wanderers unfolded the mystery of the source of the Nile in Lake Victoria Nyanza, which had been the subject of conjecture for centuries. Of explorers other than British, was the German Van der Decken, who had extensively explored the interior round about Kilima 'Njaro, and who had undoubtedly before him the attractive idea of a new German Empire, embracing a large portion of Central Africa; and who urged upon his countrymen the desirability of acquiring part, if not the whole of what was practically no-man's-land, from the east coast opposite the Island of Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo in the west. H. M. Stanley had explored Uganda, his report on which caused that country to become infested with missionaries whose subsequent squabbles about forms and dogmas gave rise to more serious disturbances amongst the Mazai and Waganda than the slave trade. Stanley had also crossed the continent, and in the employ of Leopold, King of the Belgians, made that far-seeing monarch's private venture an enormously successful enterprise--embracing a huge area, taking in from the western shore of Lake Tanganyika (which it covered) the whole country across the continent to the mouth of the Congo. The Congo Free State was born of King Leopold's venture, and remained his private concern until his death, when by his will he bequeathed the territory, over 800,000 square miles in extent, to Belgium. It might be mentioned that the Belgian Congo shut off along Lake Tanganyika British Central Africa (Nyasaland) from British East Africa (Uganda). A Frenchman, M. Labaudy, in 1904 endeavoured to emulate King Leopold, and proclaimed himself Emperor of the Sahara; but his resources not being quite in proportion to his ambitions, the Sahara was not brought under his august rule.