European exploration of Africa 1840s, so that around the midpoint of the 19th century and the beginning of the colonial Scramble for Africa, the unexplored parts were now limited to what would turn out to be the Congo Basin and the African Great Lakes. This "Heart of Africa" remained one of the last remaining "blank spots" on world maps of the later 19th century (alongside the Arctic, Antarctic and the interior of the Amazon basin). It was left for 19th-century European explorers, including those searching for the famed sources of the Nile, notably John Hanning Speke, Sir Richard Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morton
David Livingstone second missionary's wife and the deaths of three children from malaria. Livingstone had suffered over thirty attacks during his journey but had deliberately understated his suffering so as not to discourage the LMS from sending missionaries to the Kololo. Consequently, the missionaries had set out for a marshy region with wholly inadequate supplies of quinine and they had soon weakened and died. In May 1857 Livingstone was appointed as Her Majesty's Consul with a roving commission, extending through Mozambique to the areas west of it. The British government agreed to fund Livingstone's idea and he returned to Africa as head