(Deputy Governor of German East Africa.)] CHAPTER XXIV GERMAN EXPLORERS DETERMINE THE SOUTHERN LIMITS OF THE NILE BASIN The acquisition by Germany of those interior regions of the Zanzibar coast-line which now constitute German East Africa led to a considerable development of exploration in the southernmost regions of the Nile basin. Prior to 1890 there had been much discussion as to what was the Nile’s furthest tributary,--what stream, in fact, was the ultimate source of the Nile. Stanley’s journeys in search of Emin Pasha had revealed the existence of the Semliki and of Lake Albert Edward, and had thus extended considerably the length of the Albertine Nile system. Later on Count Götzen had shown by his remarkable journeys north from Tanganyika that Lake Kivu (the existence of which had been already reported by Burton, Speke, and Stanley) was connected with Tanganyika, and therefore with the Congo. This put a limit to the Nile basin in that direction, and disposed for ever of the last vestige of Livingstone’s wild dream, by which the main course of the Nile would have risen far south of the equator in what we now know to be the basin of the Congo, and have flowed through Lake Albert instead of through the Victoria Nyanza. Speke had discovered the important Kagera River (which he called the Kitangule), and Stanley had extended our knowledge of this, the largest affluent of the Victoria Nyanza. Stanley had, in fact, in 1875 christened it the Alexandra Nile, but he was very much misled about its origin and course, and he made it issue from a hypothetical lake, Akanyaru,[108] which has no existence, but which was no doubt in part an exaggeration of swamps along the course of the Kagera, and in part a confusion with the rumoured Lake Kivu.