Fred agreed to join Frank in the effort to give an account of the country beyond them, and for a couple of days they attended to little else than the collection of news concerning it. They talked with the Arab merchants, read all the books in their possession which had anything to say about Tanganyika and the Congo, questioned the Doctor, and in other ways showed that they were not to be set down as inattentive travellers. [Illustration: HILL-COUNTRY NEAR MIRAMBO'S CAPITAL.] They were already aware that the lake was discovered by Burton in 1858, was partially explored by Stanley and Livingstone a few years later, and that Stanley in his second visit to Central Africa completed the circumnavigation. Other investigations were made by Lieutenant Cameron, and the geographers are able to define the boundaries of the lake very distinctly. It is about four hundred miles long, and varies from ten to sixty miles in width; it lies between the third and ninth degrees of south latitude, and the twenty-ninth and thirty-second degrees of east longitude. Its position is south-west of the Victoria and Albert lakes, and north-west of Lake Nyassa, and its shores are for the most part mountainous. [Illustration: PORTERS AND WOMAN AND CHILD OF USAGARU.] The dispute as to its outlet, the Lukuga, was attributed by our friends to the fact that in the dry season the evaporation is equal to the amount of water received from tributary streams and the fall of rain, so that there is no flow whatever from the lake. In the rainy season the Lukuga becomes an important river, a thousand feet in width, and flowing with a strong current, while in the dry season a sand-bar is formed across it, and there is no outflow at all. The Arab traders declared that this was the case, and so we can understand how Cameron found a good-sized river where Stanley said there was none, and the flow, if any, was into the lake rather than out of it. At his second visit to Ujiji, where he met Livingstone, Stanley observed that the lake had risen considerably; and a later visitor says that the bar at the outlet of the lake had broken away, so as to allow the exit of the water, and the consequent sinking of the lake. All travellers agree that the shores of the lake are very beautiful, and in most portions thickly peopled. The principal town is Ujiji, on the eastern shore, and it will always be famous in history as the place where Stanley first shook hands with Dr. Livingstone, and offered the relief which had been sent to the great missionary by the proprietor of the _New York Herald_. [Illustration: HUT AT KIFUMA.]