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Stanley chose the route of Zanzibar, and, landing there, he went up the course of the river and crossed the country to the Victoria Nyanza by the way of Unyamwezi. He reached the lake by the end of February, 1875. On March the 8th he set out to explore the shores of the lake, and mapped the whole region, including its bays, islands, and archipelagoes, with a considerable amount of accuracy.
Nyanja or Nyanza means, generally, a marsh, lake, river, or even a mere rivulet. The party pushed on at last without guides, or only with crazy ones; for, oddly enough, they were often under great obligations to the madmen of the different villages: one of these honoured them, as they slept in the open air, by dancing and singing at their feet the whole night.
His criticism is in favour of the utilisation of every mile of waterway available. He says, regarding the Victoria Nyanza, that "it is possible to place on it a steamer at the cost of 12,677 pounds. This makes it possible to convey a ton at the rate of a halfpenny a mile, while it would require about 53,000 pounds to build a railway only eighteen miles long."
He organised a caravan of three hundred porters, provided himself with cloth, beads, brass-wire, arms, boats which could be taken to pieces, tents, and everything else necessary for a journey of several years. He made first for the Victoria Nyanza, and circumnavigated the whole lake.
The purely political events of the European continent dwindled to mere insignificance in the eyes of men who were making plans for steamboat lines on Victoria Nyanza or for railroads through the interior of Shantung.
Stanley's map, modified by the partial surveys of various explorers, is still our mapping of the lake; but if the reader will watch the maps for the next year or so, he will doubtless observe important changes in the contours of Victoria Nyanza; for all the maps, from Speke to those of 1902, will be placed on the shelf to serve only as the historical record of the good, honest work which a number of explorers have done.
He had established posts along the Nile, placed steamers on the Albert Nyanza, and he nursed the hope of being able to put an end to the horrid slave trade. In January 1877, he was appointed by the Khedive Governor of the entire Soudan. There were to be three governors under him, and he wrote to Burton offering him the governor-generalship of Darfur, with £1,600 a year.
Okara is the name by which Victoria Nyanza is known on the eastern side, and an arm of it, called Kavirondo, is about forty miles broad. Lake Baringo is a distinct body of water, some fifty miles broad, and giving off a river called Ngardabash, which flows eastwards into the Somauli country.
During the expedition, which Speke made with the king to the Nyanza, they landed on an island inhabited by a magician and his wife, who were supposed to be priests of of the water-spirit of the lake. His head was decorated with numerous mystic symbols, among them a paddle, the badge of his high office.
Pearson, of the Church Missionary Society, who was at Nyanza, gives a brief account of his visit to Khartoum in 1878, and says, "After the work of the day was finished, Gordon would say, 'Let us have reading and prayer; and in that very palace which was, perhaps, the scene of his death, we used to meet and pray, not separating sometimes until one in the morning."
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