their exploration of Damara Land. On the eastern side Wakefield Messrs Wakefield and New, the successors of Krapf and and New. Rehmann in the Mombas Mission, made numerous short journeys in the Galla country, and the former collected very valuable native information respecting the countries lying between this coast-land and the great lakes of the Nile basin. In this year also Dr Livingstone had again entered the Rovuma river, beginning that greatest of all his journeys from which he has not yet (1873) returned, and the outline of which we shall notice further on.

Livingstone.

Mauch.

Still farther south, in 1866-67, the discovery of gold in the mountains between the Zambeze and Limpopo rivers, by the pioneer Mauch, gave great impetus to exploration in this part of the continent. The years 1867-68 brought Abyssinian the memorable Abyssinian campaign, and the accurate reexpedicords kept of the line of march on the high land from Massowah to Magdala formed a most valuable contribution to African geography.

tion.

Schweinfurth.

Most important in the following years (1869-71) were the researches of the botanist, Dr Schweinfurth, in the region of the complicated network of tributaries received by the White Nile west of Gondokoro, during which he passed the water-parting of the Nile basin in this direction, and came into a new area of drainage, possibly belonging to the system of Lake Chad; and the outsetting of a great Egyptian military expedition (1869) by Sir Samuel Baker, Egyptian for the purpose of exploration of the Upper Nile and of the expediextermination of slave traffic on the river, and to plant Egyptian military posts in the regions visited.

Baker's

tion.

Livingstone.

(Lake Liemba).

(Lakes

The letters received from time to time in this country from Dr Livingstone enable us to trace roughly his movements from 1866 to the present time as follows:-Arriving from Bombay, on the East African coast, near the mouth of the Rovuma, he passed up the course of this river to the confluence of its main tributary branches, one coming from the north-west, the other from south-west. Following the latter arm, the traveller appears to have gone round the southern end of the Lake Nyassa, and, marching then in a north-westerly direction, he crossed the head waters of the Aruangoa tributary of the Zambeze, near the track of Lacerda, in the previous century; ascending a high land, he came upon a portion of the Chambeze river, belonging to a different basin, and continuing in a northwesterly direction, discovered Lake Liemba, a southern extension of Lake Tanganyika, in April 1867. Thence he turned to the Cazembe's town, and in journeys northward and southward from this point, made known the two great lakes, Moero (Sept. 1867), and Bangweolo or Bemba (July Moero and 1868), which form part of a new system, connected by the Bangweolo). Chambeze (also named the Luapula and Lualaba) river in a basin south and west of that of the Tanganyika. In 1869 Livingstone had made his way to Ujiji, Burton's haltingplace, on the eastern shore of the Tanganyika. Hence, crossing the lake, he penetrated the dense tropical forests (Manyue- and swamps of Manyuema country, in the heart of the southern portion of the continent, and during 1870-71 traced the vast river (Lualaba) flowing out of the Lake Moero, in its north and westerly course, to a second, and then a third great expansion-Lake Kamalondo the one, and the other a still unvisited body of water lying in about 3° S. lat., and 25° or 26° E. long; also learning, by native report, that the Lualaba (which is in all probability the Lualaba). upper course of the mighty Congo river) received a great tributary from south-westward. This south-western arm also expands into a vast lake, which Livingstone has named, in anticipation, Lake Lincoln.

ma).

(The

Though the untruth of a report of Livingstone's death, near the Nyassa, had been proved by an expedition sent out on his track by the Geographical Society of London in 1867, yet, at the time of his Manyuema journey, the pro

bable fate of the great traveller, from whom no news had come out of Africa for more than two years, became a matter of the greatest anxiety among all classes in Europe and America. This led to a special mission for Dr Livingstone's aid, generously fitted out at the cost of the proprietor of an American newspaper. Stanley, the leader of this expedi- Stanley. tion, made a bold march from Zanzibar to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, and was fortunate in meeting the great traveller there, returning from Manyuema, broken down by the severity of the task which he had accomplished, and in need of everything. A boat voyage round the northern end of Tanganyika, undertaken in the latter part of 1871 by Livingstone and Stanley together, proved that this great lake has no apparent outlet in a northerly direction, and leaves the question of its drainage in considerable doubt.

Recruited in health, and supplied with stores and followers, Livingstone is believed to have started afresh from Unyanyembe, a point midway in the route from Zanzibar to Ujiji, where he parted with Stanley, in autumn of 1872, to carry out a projected journey, in which he will clear up all doubts respecting the ultimate direction of the great Lualaba river.

Of the expeditions which have been progressing in Africa contemporaneously with these later journeys of Dr Livingstone, that of Sir Samuel Baker is perhaps the most important, though its story has until now been one of almost continuous hardship and disaster. Up to the middle of the year 1870, at which time the expedition, consisting of upwards of 1500 men, with numerous vessels, had safely Baker. reached a point on the Nile in 9° 26' N. lat., all appears to have gone well; but beyond this the passages of the river had become choked with overgrowth of vegetation, and each yard of advance had to be cut through this living barrier; disease broke out among the troops, and the expedition was reduced to the greatest straits. In the end, however, it appears to have been completely successful, and before Sir Samuel Baker's return to Egypt in 1873, the whole country, as far south as the equator, had been taken possession of in the name of Egypt, and several garrisons had been planted to maintain the hold.

researches.

Knowledge of the rich country between the Transvaal Republic and the Zambeze has extended with wonderful rapidity, through the exertions of the pioneers Mauch, Mohr, Recent Baines, Elton, and St Vincent Erskine, so that this region South has now almost passed out of the category of lands in which African geographical discoveries can be made. A point of great interest in the progress of the exploration of this country was the discovery by Mauch, in 1871, of the ruins of an ancient city or fortress, named Zimbaoe, certainly not of African construction, about 200 miles due west from Sofala, in lat. 20° 15′ S., long. 30° 45′ E., through which it has been sought to identify this region with the Ophir of Scripture. The finding, in 1869, of rich diamond fields in the upper valley of the Orange river, and in that of its tributary the Vaal, caused a rush of emigration to these districts, and tended still further to develop this portion of Africa.

North African exploration is also vigorously progressing. In the west, during 1869, Winwood Reade made a journey Winwood from Sierra Leone to the head of the Niger, and from 1867 Reade. onwards M. Munzinger, consul at Massowa, has greatly Munzinger. extended our knowledge of Northern Abyssinia. A notable journey of exploration in the Sahara remains to be mentioned. In 1869 Dr Nachtigal was appointed to carry Dr Nachpresents from the King of Prussia to the Sultan of Bornu, tigal. on Lake Chad, in acknowledgment of that potentate's aid to former travellers. Besides accomplishing this mission, this explorer has added very considerably to our knowledge of the Eastern Sahara by investigating the central mountainous country of Tibesti, hitherto only known by report; and in

cal

more recent journeys, still being continued, he has proved | the existence of an outflowing river from Lake Chad, which has hitherto been believed to be a terminal lake, the freshness of its waters having on this account appeared an anomaly in physical geography.

With the double purpose of affording support to Dr Livingstone, and of adding to the geography of Equatorial The Royal Africa, two expeditions were fitted out by the Royal GeoGeographi- graphical Society in 1872. One of these, led by Lieut. Cameron, was planned to follow the footsteps of LivingSociety's expedition stone in his present journey from the eastern side, entering of 1872. the country by the ordinary trade route from Zanzibar towards the Tanganyika. This expedition started from Zanzibar early in 1873, under the auspices of Sir Bartle Frere's mission, and has now made considerable progress towards the interior. The other, named the "Livingstone Congo Expedition," under Lieuts. Grandy, is to pass from the west coast to the interior, by following the river Congo, which is almost without doubt the lower course of the great Lualaba river, about to be further explored by Dr Livingstone coming to it from the eastern side. The latest accounts from this expedition are also in the highest degree favourable, and an advance of upwards of 150 miles has already been made from Loanda. A new expedition, under the leadership of the indefatigable traveller Rohlfs, is now in preparation, and is destined to explore the unknown portions of the Libyan desert.

Origin of the name of Africa.

Thus the exploration of the great continent is slowly advancing year by year, but with earnest and unceasing progress. As yet the only portions of Africa of which we possess any approach to an accurate topographical know- | ledge are, the Cape Colony and Natal under British rule in the south, the French colony of Algeria, the Portuguese possession of Angola, and Egypt and Tunis, dependent on the Turkish Empire, in the north.

Throughout the rest of the continent, a network of routes accomplished by travellers gives in most parts the great outline of its features; where these lines interlace more closely, as in the South African Republics, and in Abyssinia, the general aspect of the land is now so well known as to preclude the possibility of any important geographical discovery there; elsewhere, however, the gaps between the tracks are wider. In the vast inhospitable region of the Sahara there are great areas still unknown to civilised man, and the equatorial region of dense forests in Central Africa is still one of the greatest terræ incognitæ of the globe.

The origin and meaning of the name of this great continent has been a fertile subject for conjecture among philologists and antiquaries. By the Greeks it was called Libya, Aßun, and by the Romans Africa. Varro believed he had found the etymology of the former in Libs, the Greek name of the south wind; and Servius, the scholiast on Virgil, proposed to derive the other from the Latin word aprica (sunny), or the Greek word a-phriké (without cold). It is more probable that the name Libya was derived by the Greeks from the name of the people whom they found in possession of the country to the westward of Egypt, and who are believed to have been those that are called in the Hebrew Scriptures Lehabim or Lubim. With respect to the word Africa, Suidas tells us that it was the proper name of that great city which the Romans called Carthago, and the Greeks, Karchedon. It is certain, at least, that it was applied originally to the country in the immediate neighbourhood of Carthage, that part of the continent first known to the Romaus, and that it was subsequently extended with their increasing knowledge, till it came at last to include the whole continent. Of the meaning of the name, the language of Carthage itself supplies a simple and natural explanation; the word Afrygah, signifying a separate establishment, or in other words a colony, as

Carthage was of Tyre. So that the Phoenicians of old, at home, may have spoken of their Afrygah, just as we speak of our colonies. Be that as it may, the Arabs of the present day still give the name of Afrygah or Afrikiyah to the territory of Tunis. It may also be remarked, that the name seems not to have been used by the Romans till after the time of the first Punic war, when they became first acquainted with what they afterwards called Africa Propria.

Africa lies between the latitudes of 38° N. and 35° S., Position and is of all the continents the most truly tropical. It is, and extent. strictly speaking, an enormous peninsula attached to Asia by the isthmus of Suez. The most northern point is the Cape, situated a little to the west of Cabo Blanco, and opposite Sicily, which lies in lat. 37° 20′ 40′′ N., long. 9° 41' E. Its southernmost point is Cabo d'Agulhas, in 34° 49′ 15′′ S.; the distance between these two points being 4330 geographical, or about 5000 English miles. The westernmost point is Cabo Verde, in long. 17° 33′ W., its easternmost Cape Jerdaffun, in long. 51° 21′ E., lat. 10° 25′ N., the distance between the two points being about the same as its length. The western coasts are washed by the Atlantic, the northern by the Mediterranean, and the eastern by the Indian Ocean.

The form has been likened to a triangle, or to an oval, Form but such a comparison is scarcely warranted, it being of an irregular shape, the northern half rounding off, the southern one contracting and terminating in a point.

The superficial extent of Africa has never been accurately Superficial determined, but may be taken at 9,858,000 geographical extent. square miles, exclusive of the islands. It is larger than either Europe or Australia, but smaller than Asia and the New World.

tion.

The physical configuration may be considered under two Physical heads, the great lower-lands and plains of Northern Africa, configuraand the great table-lands, with their mountain ranges and groups, of Central and Southern Africa. The great northern lower-land comprises the Sahara, the Lake Chad region, and the valley of the Lower Nile. The Sahara is by no means a plain throughout, but for the greater part it rises into table-lands, interspersed with mountain groups of 6000 feet elevation, and probably more, and the term lower-lands can only be applied to it in a general way, to distinguish it from the more elevated region to the south.

lower-land

The Sahara has often been pictured as a monotonous and immense expanse of sand; but nothing could be more erroneous, as the greatest variety exists in the physical configuration of its surface, as well as in its geological features. Our knowledge is as yet too scanty to enable us to trace its features in every part. On the north, this great The desert is fringed with extensive table-lands, which in some northern places rise abruptly from the Mediterranean, as the great of Africa. plateau of Barbary, extending through Marocco, Algeria, and Tunis, and the table-land of Barca, elevated 1500 feet, and gradually descending towards the Delta of the Nile, This elevated ground is succeeded to the south by a depressed region, which extends from the Great Syrtis or Gulf of Sidra, in a general direction as far as Middle Egypt, and comprises the oases of Augila and Siwah. So greatly depressed is this region, that the level of the oasis of Siwah is 100 feet, and in one place (Bahrein) even 167 feet below the level of the sea. The western portions of this country, between the oases of Augila and Siwah, explored in I. 32

edge is the great water-parting of the continent, and the streams which form the Orange river flow down its inward slope. There is no break in the continuance of the edge where it passes round from the Drakenberg to form the inmost and highest of the alternate ridges and terraces of the Cape Colony. It is now named in successive parts from east to west the Storm Berge, the Zuur Berg, Schnee edge of the Berge, Nieuwe-veld, and Rogge-veld, the last-named porplateau. tion of the edge turning northward with the bend of the western coast. Its greatest height within the Cape Colony is in Compass Berg, the summit of the Schnee Berge, 8500 feet above the sea.

Southern

Western

The outer terraces of the Cape Colony, in which two chief ridges may be traced, lie closer together, and much nearer the coast; between these and the inmost or chief edge is the dry elevated region known as the Great Karroo. Their elevation is also very considerable, though they are broken through by lines of drainage sloping from the chief edge; the part of the middle ridge, which is named the Little Zwarte Berge, attains 7628 feet, and several points in both are upwards of 6000 feet above the sea. Table Mountain, a well-known and flat-topped mass of granite overhanging Cape Town, 3550 feet high, is the nucleus of the peninsula which extends south to form the Cape of Good Hope, but is altogether separated from the mountain ridges of the colony. The western edge of the great African plateau is generally edge of the lower than the eastern, since the whole slope of the continent plateau. is more or less from the great heights on its eastern side, towards the west, but it is also clearly traceable, and of great height throughout. Rounding the western side of the Cape Colony, the three ridges above noticed run together, and decrease somewhat in elevation as the mouth of the Orange river is approached. Their elevation at the point of union in Little Namaqua Land is still very considerable; and here Mount Welcome attains 5130 feet, and Vogelklip, to north of it, 4343 feet above the sea. Beyond the Orange river in Namaqua and Damara Lands, the western edge continues in one or more terraces parallel to the coast. Mount Omatako, in the latter country, rises to 8800 feet. Northward, through Benguela and Angola, a more broken series of ridges and terraces mark the descent from the interior plateau, and the great Congo river breaks through to the coast-land at the place where it forms the cataracts of the narrow gorge of Yellala. Sierra Complida is the name given by the Portuguese to that part of the western edge which runs between the Congo and the rapids of the lower Ogowai river on the equator. On the plateau edge at the southern side of this river, Du Chaillu has made known a mountain of 12,000 feet in elevation; and the furthest point which has been reached on the Ogowai was in the vicinity of high mountains. Passing the Ogowai, and following the coast of the Bight of Biafra, the edge is now known as the Sierra do Crystal. The Camaroon mountains, at the head of the gulf, form a high peninsula of volcanic mountains, rising to 13,700 feet; but are isolated from the plateau lands, and belong rather to the remarkable line of volcanic heights which shows itself in the islands of Fernando Po, Prince's Island, St Thomas, and Annobon, stretching away into the ocean in the direction of St Helena. From the Sierra do Crystal the plateau edge inclines towards the lower course of the river Niger to a point above its delta, and below the confluence of the Benue, and then turns abruptly to the cast. The heights which skirt the northern coast-land of the Gulf of Guinea, and which stretch as far as the head-waters of the Senegal and Gambia, and in the inner slope of which the Niger also has its sources, may be considered as an extension from the great plateau. But they are of smaller general elevation; and that best known part of the ridge, which has the name of the Kong Mountains, is apparently not higher than from 2000 to 3000 feet.

The northern edge of the great African plateau is almost Northern unknown; but there are evidences that it runs eastward edge of the between the 4th and 8th parallels of N. latitude, to a point plateau. at which it is well known, and where the Nile falls over its slope, forming the succession of rapids above Gondokoro. The character of the upper Benue river is that of a mountainborn river; and Mounts Alantika, 10,000 feet high, and Mindif, 6000 feet, which rise to southward of Lake Chad, seem to be the outliers of the plateau edge in which the Benue has its sources. Beyond the Nile the margin of the plateau curves northward, to form the inner slope of the Abyssinian table-land.

The general elevation of the surface of the great African plateau, the limits of which have now been traced, may be taken at from 3000 to 4000 feet above the sea; but its surface presents very great undulations, from the depressions which are occupied by some of the great lakes, to the high mountains which rise above its average level. The most prominent of these interior masses yet known Heights are the Blue Mountains, discovered by Baker, rising from in the inthe western shore of the Albert Lake to a height of per- terior of the plateau. haps 10,000 feet, and which are believed to extend southward to unite with the Balegga Mountains, made known by Livingstone in his journey of 1871, north-west of Lake Tanganyika; these again are believed to join with the mountains which rise midway between the Victoria, the Albert Nyanza, and the Tanganyika, dividing the drainage to these vast lakes, and rising here in Mount M'fumbiro to upwards of 10,000 feet. Another great central line of heights which also had an important part in directing the water-shed of the interior of South Africa, runs from the north of the Nyassa Lake, where it is named the Lobisa plateau, through the Muchinga Mountains, which separate the drainage of the Lualaba and its lakes from that of the Zambeze basin, westward to the heights in the far interior of Angola, known as the Mossamba Mountains, and from which rivers flow in all directions. ;

The plateau of Barbary, in the north of the continent, Plateau of beyond the lower land of the Sahara, is a distinct and Barbary. separate high land, stretching from Cape Bon, on the Mediterranean coast opposite Sicily, in a south-westerly direction to the Atlantic coast, through Tunis, Algeria, and Marocco. The eastern portion of it in Algeria and Tunis rises in a broad plateau from 2000 to 3000 feet in general height, with outer heights, enclosing an elevated steppe, at a distance of about 100 miles apart. On the west, where it enters Marocco, these outer ridges draw together and form the high ranges of the Atlas Mountains, rising to a much greater elevation, and attaining 11,400 feet in the summit named Mount Miltsin.

The African continent, as far as it has yet been explored, seems to be the portion of the globe least disturbed by volcanic action. The known active volcanoes in the continent are those of the Camaroon Mountains, on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in the west, and the Artali volcano in the depressed region of the salt desert which lies between the Abyssinian plateau and the Red Sea. This latter volcano is probably a part of the system with which the volcanic island of Jebel Tur, in the Red Sea, near the same latitude, is connected. One other active volcano only Greater is known by report, the Njemsi volcano, in the country geological between Mount Kenia and the Victoria Lake. Shocks of earthquake appear to be almost unknown in any part of the continent. It has been pointed out by the late Sir Roderick Murchison that the older rocks which are known to circle round the continent, unquestionably in cluded an interior marshy or lacustrine country, and that the present centre zone of waters, whether lakes, rivers, or marshes, extending from Lake Chad to Lake Ngami, are but the great modern residual phenomena of those

features.

Minerals

of a mesozoic age. The surface of the South African |
continent has not been diversified in recent times by the
outpouring of lava streams, or broken up by the efforts
of subterranean heat to escape.
Nor has it been sub-
jected to those great oscillations by which the surfaces
of many other countries have been so placed under the
waters of the ocean as to have been strewed over with
erratic blocks and marine exuviæ. The interior of South
Africa may therefore be viewed as a country of very
ancient conservative terrestrial character. Knowledge of
the special geology of Africa is yet confined to the few
parts of the continent in which Europeans have perma-
nently settled. In this respect the southern region of the
Cape Colony and Natal have advanced furthest, and their
geological features have been mapped out with some
accuracy. Elsewhere in the continent, excepting in Algeria
and Angola, light has only been thrown along the line
followed by the few explorers who have given attention to
this subject.

Among the minerals of Africa, salt is widely distributed, and metals. though in some districts wholly wanting. Thus in the Abyssinian high land the salt, which is brought up in small blocks from the depressed salt plain on the Red Sea coast beneath, is so valued as to be used as a money currency; and in the native kingdoms of South Central Africa, the salt districts are royal possessions strictly guarded. Metals seem nowhere very abundant. Gold is perhaps the most generally distributed. The gold-fields of the Transvaal Republic and of the country which extends thence to the Zambeze, are numerous; but no yield has as yet been discovered of sufficient quantity to overcome the difficulties of working, and of transport to the distant sea-ports, to which no navigable rivers lead from this region. Copper is known to exist in large quantities in the mountains of native kingdoms of the centre of South Africa; and one of the objects of Dr Livingstone's present journey is to visit the famed copper country of Katanga south-west of the Tanganyika Lake. The diamond-fields in the districts of the Vaal and Orange rivers north of the Cape Colony are now steadily worked, and give good returns.

General

of Africa.

Africa is the only one of the continents of the globe nature of which lies equally to north and south of the equator, the surface and the portions of it which extend beyond the tropics do not advance far into the temperate zones. From this it results that Africa, besides being the warmest of all the continents, has also the most equal distribution of the sun's heat during the seasons over the parts which lie north and south of the central line. Winds and rain, depending on the distribution of heat, are also correspondingly developed in these two great divisions of the continent, and the broad landscape zones, passing from humid forest to arid sandy desert, also agree exactly with one another north and south of Equatorial Africa.

Equatorial forests.

Between 10° N. and 10° S. of the equator, but especially in that portion of it the outskirts of which have only as yet been reached by travellers, Africa appears to be a land of dense tropical forest. Wherever it has been penetrated, travellers speak of an excessively rank vegetation; passage has to be forced through thick underwood and creeping plants, between giant trees, whose foliage shuts out the sun's rays; and the land teems with animal and insect life of every form and colour. Describing the forests of Manyuema country, west of the Tanganyika Lake, Livingstone says "Into these [primæval forests] the sun, though vertical, cannot penetrate, excepting by sending down at midday thin pencils of rays into the gloom. The rain water stands for months in stagnant pools made by the feet of elephants. The climbing plants, from the size of a whipcord to that of a man-of-war's hawser, are so numerous, that the ancient path is the only passage. When one

To

of the giant trees falls across the road, it forms a wall breast high to be climbed over, and the mass of tangled ropes brought down makes cutting a path round it a work of time which travellers never undertake." Here there is a double rainy season, and the rainfall is excessive. north and south of this central belt, where the rainfall diminishes, and a dry and wet season divides the year, the forests gradually open into a park-like country, and then merge into pastoral grass-lands. In North Africa this Northern pastoral belt is occupied by the native states of the and Soudan, from Abyssinia westward, in the parallel of Lake pastoral Chad, to the Gambia on the Atlantic coast; and corre- belts. sponding to this in the south, are the grass-lands stretching across the continent from the Zambeze to southern Angola and Benguela. The pastoral belts again gradually pass into the dry, almost rainless desert zones of the Sahara in Deserts. the north, and the Kalahari desert in the south, which present many features of similarity.

The extremities of the continent, to which moisture is carried from the neighbouring oceans, again pass into a second belt of pastoral or agricultural land, in the northward slopes of the plateaus of Barbary, Marocco, Algeria, and Tunis, corresponding with the seaward terraces of cultivated land in the Cape Colony in the south.

southern

Taking a broad view of the hydrography of Africa, there Rivers are two great areas of continental drainage, one in the north, the other in the south, from which no water escapes directly to the ocean. These correspond almost exactly with the two desert belts of the Sahara and the Kalahari above described. The whole of the remaining portions of the continent, its forests and pastoral districts, in which the greater rainfall gives greater power to the rivers, are drained by streams which find their way to the ocean on one side or other, generally forcing a passage through some natural or waterworn gorge in the higher circle of mountains which run round the outer edges of the great plateau.

By far the larger portion of the oceanic drainage of the continent is to the Atlantic and its branch the Mediterranean, to which the Nile, Niger, Ogowai, Congo, and Orange rivers flow. The great rivers which drain on the opposite side, to the Indian Ocean, are the Juba, Zambeze, and Limpopo; whilst the northern continental basin, by far more extensive than the southern, has only one great river, the Shari, which supplies Lake Chad.

It must be noticed that the capabilities of the African rivers, as highways of approach to the interior of the continent, are exceedingly small in comparison with those of the other great continents of the globe, most of them being either barred at their mouths, or by rapids at no great distance from the coast. It is owing to this physical cause mainly that the African continent has remained for so many centuries a sealed book to the civilised world. On the other hand, it must be observed, that when these outer barriers have been passed, the great interior of the land, in its most productive regions, possesses a network of vast rivers and lakes, unsurpassed in extent by those of any country of the world, by means of which the resources of Central Africa may in future be thoroughly developed.

The Nile is the oldest of historical rivers, and afforded Nile. the only means of subsistence to the earliest civilised people on earth, and yet the origin of this river remained an enigma almost to the present day. Though it drains a larger area than any other river of Africa, upwards of 1,000,000 square miles, and in this respect is one of the largest rivers of the globe, the Nile, passing for a great portion of its lower course through the desert belt of North Africa, and receiving no tributaries there, loses much of its volume by evaporation, and is far surpassed in the quantity of water conveyed to the ocean by the Congo, in the moist equatorial zone. The great labours of Dr