We have read the roll of names rendered immortal by efforts to reach the two Poles of the earth. Africa’s list of explorers contains the names of Livingstone, Gordon, Cameron, Speke, Grant, Burton, Baker, Schweinfurth, Stanley, Kirk, Van der Decken, Elton, Pinto, Johnston, and others, some of whom have laid down their lives in the cause of science, and every one recalling memories of gigantic difficulties grappled with, of dangers boldly encountered, of sufferings bravely borne, of great achievements performed, and all within the space of twenty years. Before entering these Lake Regions of Africa to see what they contain, it is due to the past to recall the fact that an old chart of the African Continent was published at Rome in 1591, which contains a system of equatorial lakes and rivers. It shows the Blue Nile coming out of Abyssinia, and the White Nile taking its rise in two great lakes under the equator——the Victoria Nyanza of Speke, and the Albert Nyanza of Baker. Due south from Albert Nyanza is another lake which is the equivalent of Tanganyika, and this is not only connected with the Congo but with the Nile and Zambesi. Cameron and Stanley have both shown that Tanganyika sends its surplus waters, if any it has, to the Congo, and Livingstone has proven that the head waters of these two mighty rivers are intimately connected. Is this ancient map a happy guess, or does it present facts which afterwards fell into oblivion? Ere the slave trade put its ban between the coast traders and the dwellers of the interior, ere Portuguese influence ceased in Abyssinia, and the missions of the Congo left off communications with Rome, did these unknown regions yield their secrets to the then existing civilization? May not this geographic scrap, dug from among the rubbish of the Vatican library, be the sole relic now extant of a race of medieval explorers the fame of whose adventures has fallen dumb, and whose labors have to be gone over again? The map of Africa, used in our school days, had a blank centre. No geographer had soiled its white expanse with lines and figures. It was the “happy hunting ground” of conjecture and fancy. The Zambesi and Congo were short stumps of rivers, with perhaps a dotted line to tell what was not known. When two traders——the Pombeiros——passed from Angola on the west to the Pacific, in the beginning of the present century, and wrote how they had crossed a hundred rivers, visited the courts of powerful negro kings, traversed countries where the people had made considerable progress in the industries and arts, their story, like that of other pioneers, was discredited and their information treated with contemptuous neglect.