So long ago as 1860, King Leopold, then Duke of Brabant, in a speech delivered before the Belgian Senate, said: “I claim for Belgium her share of the sea,”—apparently a plain and colourless utterance, but really the expression of a vital interest for his country, for which no market spells extinction, and no political power but on Belgian soil means no market for Belgian goods. In 1860 the attention of mankind was just beginning to turn to Africa. Two years before, Sir Richard Burton and Captain Speke had startled geographers by discovering Lake Tanganyika, a revelation to be soon afterwards eclipsed by the further discovery of the sources of the Nile and Lake Victoria, by Speke and Grant. About the same time Sir Samuel Baker, then in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, discovered Lake Albert. The travellers whose fortune it was to make these important discoveries had been preceded by the intrepid Dr. Livingstone, whose marvellous energies on behalf of civilisation and Christianity were, however, chiefly confined to the Zambesi Valley until the year 1866, when he first entered the Congo region and further enhanced his already great reputation by discovering the lakes Moero and Bangweolo. Then came the discovery of Livingstone—himself so long lost to his anxious countrymen—by Henry M. Stanley. That was in 1871, when the armed hosts of France and Germany were engaged in a death struggle, and led Mr. Gladstone to remark: The eyes of all the world are bent toward the bloody battle-fields of France; but I prefer to regard those almost impenetrable African wilds where a small band of men, whose numbers may be counted on the fingers of one hand, add year by year to our knowledge of those little-known regions, carrying with them the blessings of civilisation and of truth, heralding the extinction of what for so many ages has been the world’s curse—slavery. [Illustration: Native Huts Built of Leaves (Aruwimi).]