During these years wide explorations were made in Central Africa, north of the equator, by Rohlfs, Nachtigal and Schweinfurth. Nach tigal, a worthy successor of Heinrich Barth, succeeded in making his way into Wadai, a Mohammedan state in Sudan, a goal the pur suit of which had cost the lives of two emi nent explorers, Vogel (1856) and Beurmann (1863). Schweinfurth penetrated into the cannibal regions west of the equatorial Nile, and in 1871 came to the Welle, whose west course convinced him that he had traveled be yond the bounds of the Nile.
These journeys were coincident with a re markable epoch in the geographical annals of America. The explorations of Da11 revealed the extent of the Yukon; the mountain systems of the West were explored by Wheeler, Whitney and Hayden; traversed the grand canon of the Colorado; Washburne and Hayden made known the marvels of the Yellowstone. The knowledge of British America was at this time greatly extended by the travels of Bell, Selwyn, Dawson and others. Simultaneously with the exploration of the mountains of North Amer ica, the geological structure of the Andes was laid bare by Reiss and Stiibel, who ascended the volcano of Cotopaxi to its summit.
While the rest of the world was engaged in prying open the recesses of the continents, the Russians were displaying extraordinary activity in the exploration of their vast Asiatic domain and the regions bordering on it. In the first 15 years of the reign of Alexander II, Sem yenov, Valikhanov, Radlov, Ostensacken, Sye vertsov, Fedtchenko and Kaulbars assailed that mighty mountain barrier composed of the Altai, Alatau, Tian-Shan, Alai Tagh and the Panzer, which shuts off the elevated desert region of Central Asia from the plains of Western Turke stan and Siberia. During the same period Shishmarev, Mattussnvski and Pavlinov pene trated into Mongolia, and Palladius into Man churia. The Russian advance into Central Asiatic highlands met with a prompt response from beyond the Himalayas, whence Hayward, Shaw and Forsyth pushed into Eastern Turke stan, while the pundit Nain Singh made a memorable traverse of Tibet.
When Japan and China, soon after the mid dle of the 19th century, opened their portals to the world, the work of exploration, previ ously inaugurated by dauntless missionaries and naturalists, proceeded with a new lin petus. Great journeys were made in China by Blakiston, Pumpelly, Ney, Elias, Bastian, Cooper and Richthofen, who belong to the foremost ranks of Asiatic explorers. In the decade beginning with 1861 explorations were made in the Caucasus, by Radde, in northern Arabia by Palgrave, and in Turkestan by Vambery and Lagree and Gamier traced the course of the Mekong as far up as the Chinese province of Yunnan. Contemporaneous with these travels were the remarkable journeys per formed in Australia by Burke and Willis, Mac Kinlay, Stuart and Forrest, whose exploits were emulated by Giles and Warburton.
The year 1871 is memorable in the history of geographical discovery for the dramatic epi sode of the finding of Livingstone by Stanley. The meeting by the waters of Tanganyika was followed by the exploration of the north end of the lake which was found to have no out let in that direction. Livingstone then returned to the scene of his recent labors, the Luapula Lualaba basin. On 1 May 1873, he expired on the shores of Lake Bangweolo, which he had discovered and which he had become convinced belonged to the Kongo system. In 1874 Cam eron discovered that Lake Tanganyika was con nected by an outlet, the sluggish Lukuga, with the river formed by the Lualaba and Luapula. This river (which Livingstone had reached in 1871 at Nyangwe) was found by Cameron to flow at too low a level to admit of its belonging to the Nile system. This fearless traveler was prevented by the hostility of the natives from descending the stream and verifying his belief that it was the Kongo. It was reserved for the dauntless spirit of Stanley to bring the mightiest of African rivers within the ken of mankind. In November 1876 he embarked at Nyangwe in a fleet of canoes, and performing an unprecedented voyage which twice carried him across the equator, he reached the tides of the Atlantic in August 1877. And now came the great task of exploring the Kongo tribu taries, which enlisted the energies of Stanley, Capella and Ivens, Buchner, Pogge, Wissman, Grenfell, Wolf, Bruckner and Van Gele.
While the veil was being lifted in this quar ter, new light was thrown on the regions west of the Upper Nile by the travels of Junker, Casati, Gessi and Lupton, the country between the Ukerewe and the coast was opened up by Fischer, Thomson, and Johnston, the naturalist Emil Holub traveled in the Zambesi region, and the explorations of Brazza between the Ogowe and the Kongo laid the foundations of a new French colony. Between 1878 and 1881 Serpa Pinto made his traverse of South Africa, Oskar Lenz performed a journey from Tangier to Timbuktu and thence to the Senegaland Matteuci crossed from Egypt to the Gulf of Guinea. At this time began the extraordinary career of Emin Bey (Eduard Schnitzer), ad ministrator, explorer, naturalist and linguist, in the region of the equatorial Nile. This heroic commander, the peer of the great Gor don, was cut off for years from the world by the Mandist uprising, till at last Stanley suc ceeded in reaching him by way of the Kongo and Aruwimi, an exploit which recalled the days of the Conquistadores. In 1887 the Rudolf lake was discovered by Teleki. In 1889 Meyer reached the summit of ICilima-Njaro.