These stories from the missionaries revived the interest in Ptolemy’s Geography. The Nile lakes were once more believed in, especially as the discovery of Kenya and Kilimanjaro appeared to confirm the stories of the Mountains of the Moon. This idea indeed was additionally favoured by the fact that the missionaries often referred to their hypothetical lake as the Sea of Unyamwezi, which name they rightly explained as meaning (we know not why) the “Land of the Moon.”[48] CHAPTER XI BURTON AND SPEKE Nile exploration from the north had stopped in 1851 at the rapids south of Gondokoro. It was now felt that the problem should be attacked from other directions. In 1839 the British government had formally annexed Aden at the southwestern corner of Arabia as a coaling station for ships plying between Suez and India. Aden is opposite the Somali coast, and has been for many centuries the outpost of civilisation with which the Somali have traded. It was impossible to possess Aden long without desiring to become acquainted with the character of the African coast across the gulf, especially as Aden depended so much on Somaliland for its supplies of meat, grain, and fodder, and the ostrich feathers, ivory, and skins sold in the Aden bazaars. Aden was, and is still, under the government of India, and officers of the Indian army soon found their way across to Somaliland on authorised or unauthorised surveys. Among these was Lieutenant Cruttenden, who collected some new information about the sterile country beyond the coast. In 1854 a remarkable man came to Aden as an officer in the Indian garrison,--Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton, fresh from his wonderful journey as a pilgrim to Mecca. Burton induced the authorities to support him in a project for entering inner East Africa through Somaliland, and thus perhaps striking at the sources of the Nile. Another explorer in the bud, Lieutenant John Hanning Speke, reached Aden soon afterwards, and obtained permission to join Burton’s expedition. Whilst waiting for a time thought to be favourable for travelling southwards into the Ogadein country, Burton went off alone on a remarkably plucky journey to the mysterious city of Harrar, to-day a frontier town of Abyssinia. Harrar, lying to the south of that Rift valley, which can be traced after a few interruptions from the Gulf of Tajurra right down into British and German East Africa, was a walled city inhabited by a Semitic people, or rather a people still retaining the use of a Semitic dialect akin to those of Abyssinia and South Arabia.