[114] I should again like to point out how frequent amongst Nilotic Negroes is the word Kir for a big river. This name is frequently applied to the main Nile, and appears even to crop up again in the Bantu languages of the Victoria Nyanza, for in Luganda the Nile is also called Kiira. [115] Piaggia was originally an Italian mechanic, born at Alexandria. He drifted to the Sudan in 1856, and generally attached himself as a sort of caravan leader to the traders in the Bahr-al-Ghazal. In this capacity he explored (quite unscientifically) the Nyam-nyam country in 1863–1865, and in 1876 he visited Lake Kioga and the Victoria Nile. [116] For various reasons not all Captain Marchand’s officers could be brought away from the Nile immediately. Lieutenant Tanguedec was left for some two years entirely isolated on the White Nile near Bor. [117] A name very suggestive of the Bantu languages. [118] Negroes of the Semliki valley and forest. [119] This lake is at present one of the unsolved African problems as regards its history and affinities. Unlike other lakes of Central Africa, its fauna has marine affinities, and would seem indeed to be actually of marine origin. It is at the present day connected somewhat intermittently with the Congo drainage, and therefore with the Atlantic Ocean; and one assumption to explain the existence of its sponges, shrimps, and jelly-fishes is that in Jurassic times it was connected with a vast inlet of the Atlantic Ocean which occupied the northern half of the low-lying Congo basin. Yet, when a relief map of Africa is looked at, it strikes one at a glance that Tanganyika lies within the same rift valley as Lakes Kivu, Albert Edward, Albert Nyanza, and the Albertine Nile. Its southern end may also have been connected through Lake Rukwa, with the rift valley of Lake Nyasa. It would be easy to imagine the occurrence of a recent and slight upheaval which detached this lake from the Nile system and sent its overflowing waters in the direction of the Congo, but for the aforementioned marine fauna of its waters. Its history, therefore, remains at the present moment an unsolved problem. [120] With a bifurcated rift up Tanganyika. [121] See “L’Omo,” by L. Vannutelli and C. Citerni. [122] A small and very interesting lake which lies about sixty miles to the north of Tanganyika, and communicates with that lake by the river Rusizi. [123] Some rising as far south as Lat. 3° 50′ S. and within ten miles of Tanganyika. [124] Bahr-al-Jabl, so called by the Turks and early French and German explorers, because by following it up stream they came at last to mountains after the thousand miles of marsh between Khartum and Bor. [125] “River of gazelles,” i.e., antelopes, the name given to it by the Sudanese Arabs from the dense herds of game which were formerly to be seen on its marshy shores.