The Victoria Nyanza

Lake Victoria (in the Bantu language, Victoria Nyanza), is the largest lake in Africa and the second largest body of fresh water in the world, surpassed only by Lake Superior in North America. The lake is crossed by the equator, and is the chief source of the Nile River. The first European to reach the lake was the British explorer John Hanning Speke in 1858, who named it after Britain's Queen Victoria. In 1890, at the height of the European scramble for colonies in Africa, Britain and Germany divided Lake Victoria at 1° south latitude, with the southern portion allotted to Germany, the northern portion to Britain. The Germans conducted extensive scientific surveys of the southern shores of the lake, for both research and strategic purposes. This book, an English translation of a study by a former officer of the Imperial Troops for German East Africa, Paul Kollmann, provides detailed information about the land and peoples living along the shores of the lake. A concluding section is devoted to the grammar, pronunciation, and vocabularies of the Karagwe (Nkole), Ussindja, Uha, Ki-Uganda, and Ki-Ukerewe languages and dialects. Today, Lake Victoria lies partly in Tanzania, in Uganda, and in Kenya.