Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/506

 about 1,630,000 square miles. But the elements even for a remotely approximate estimate of the population are still lacking. From the accounts, however, of various explorers, who have visited many thickly peopled districts, twenty millions

would certainly appear to be too low a figure, and Stanley himself considers twenty-nine millions as perhaps nearest to the truth.

The farthest headstreams of the Congo take their rise on the southern slope of the Tchingambo mountains, midway between lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa, which in a straight line is not more than 420 miles from Kiloa, the nearest town on the shore of the Indian Ocean. This region of the Upper Congo, visited by Joseph Thomson and Stewart in 1879, and by Lenz in 1886, rises to a height of 6,000