It will be remembered that a remarkable turn was given to Nile exploration when between 1849 and 1855 the German missionaries in the employ of the Church Missionary Society at Mombasa reported their explorations of inner East Africa,--explorations which revealed the existence of snow-mountains, and which gathered reports of great lakes in the interior. The outcome of these researches on the part of Krapf and Rebman was the despatch of Speke and Burton in search of the Nile lakes. We read that only Burton’s excessive prudence prevented this first expedition to the lakes from starting inland from Mombasa and following the trading route right through the Masai country to the Victoria Nyanza. This was the route followed by Arab traders as far back as 1850. The terror caused by the Masai led to great exaggerations of the dangers of this direct journey. Its chief difficulty lay in the fact that owing to the ravages of the Masai and the somewhat waterless character of the intervening country, there were no inhabitants for a distance of some two hundred miles between the coast regions on the east and the fertile lands bordering the Victoria Nyanza on the west. The missionaries, German and English, who were settled at or near Mombasa, continued to collect information from Arab caravans. In this way news arrived of the existence of the Rift valley, with its chain of lakes, salt and fresh, and of some greater lake beyond called “Samburu,” afterwards known as Lake Rudolf; also of the Nilotic Negroes in the country of Kavirondo, on the northeast coast of the Victoria Nyanza. Much of this information was industriously gathered up by a most excellent missionary, the late Mr. Wakefield,[96] who sent his notes and theories to an eminent geographer, E. G. Ravenstein. Mr. Ravenstein prepared this information for the use of the Royal Geographical Society, and in about 1880 had gathered together all that was known from surveys and reports into maps illustrating Eastern Equatorial Africa. [Illustration: N.E. CORNER OF VICTORIA NYANZA (WITH SAMIA HILLS IN DISTANCE). Near where Joseph Thomson struck the lake shore at the end of his long march, December, 1883.]