Speke), forms the western spinal prolongation of the Lunar Mountains. The residence of the Mwami, or chief sultan, Mwezi (moon ?), is near the head-stream of the Kitanguré (Kitangulé), or river of Karagwah, which rises at a place distant six days' march (sixty miles), and bearing northeast from Tanganyika. The settlement of this sultan of the moon is, according to the Arabs, of considerable extent; the huts are built of rattan, and lions abound in the vicinity. (Burton, vol. ii. p. 144). Burton also tells us (vol. i. p. 409) that the Malagarazi, the great tributary to Lake Tanganyika, according to all travellers in these regions, arises in the mountains of Urundi, at no great distance from the Kitanguré, or river of Karagwah; but while the latter, springing from the upper counter-slope, feeds the Nyanza (Victoria), or Northern Lake, the Malagarazi, rising in the lower slope of the equatorial range, trends to the south-east, till it becomes entangled in the decline of the Great Central African Depression-the hydrographical basin first indicated in his address of 1852, by Sir R. I. Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society. North of Lake Tanganyika, and in the same decline, beyond the country of the Uzige, is Lake Rusisi, or Lusiza, from which a river flows southwards to Tanganyika. This lake is described by Burton as the main drain of the countries north of Lake Tanganyika. Speke has in his map, published by Stanford, a lofty mountain, called Mfumbira, estimated to attain an elevation of ten thousand feet, and apparently the culminating point of the Mountains of the Moon in Ruanda, due west of this lake. This portion of the Mountains of the Moon constitutes, then, the dividing ridge between the Rusisi and Tanganyika valley and that of the Kitangulé and the Nile. It is, according to Captain Speke, to the west and south of Karagwé that Lake Victoria receives its greatest terrestrial supply of water, through the medium of the Kitangulé River, which in draining the aforesaid Luero-lo-Uzige, or Lake of Uzige, also drains off the superfluous waters of many minor lakes, as the Akenyard in Urundi, the Luckurow, which is the second of the chain with the Akenyard, the Mgerzi and Karagimé, and the little Winandermere-the Windermere of Africa—which in Karagwe lies below the capital, on its south-eastern corner. None of these lakes are large-mere puddles in comparison to the great Lake Victoria; but the Kitangulé River, after receiving all its contributions, is a noble river, low sunk like a huge canal, about eighty yards across, with the velocity of about four miles an hour, which appears equal to the Nile itself as soon as it issues from the lake by the Ripon Falls.

The question naturally suggests itself, says Captain Speke, what forms these lakes? whence originate these waters? It is simply this: the Mountains of the Moon, in which they lie, encircling the northern end and the Tanganyika Lake, are exposed to the influences of the rainy zone, where I observed, in 1862, no less than two hundred and thirty-eight days out of the year were more or less wet days.

The district of Karagwé constituted one of the most interesting portions of the journey. The climate is said by Captain Grant to be equal to England in summer during the whole of the year. There are but few trees, and the grass on the hills grows to the height of three or four feet. It was too hilly for camping in with comfort, and the expedition was obliged to look out for gardens or banana plantations wherein to camp

during the day. The country produces cattle, peas, beans, sugar-cane, bananas, tomatoes, and tobacco in abundance, and is everywhere in a high state of cultivation. The king and his people are also described as being the most civilised met with on the journey, and many peculiarities in manners and customs were observed, of which we hope to give a full account when the detailed narrative of the journey shall be published.

The next district, Uganda, is described by Captain Grant as the garden of Equatorial Africa. The king is despotic and tyrannical, but the people take great pride in their country, which is thickly inhabited. The scenery is beautiful in parts, and towards the north large herds of sleek hornless cattle are seen grazing. At Mashondé, not long after entering Uganda, a first view of Lake Victoria appears to have been obtained. The Woganda boatmen, according to Captain Speke, go hence in a southerly direction to the island of Ukerewé, which the captain saw on his first journey to Muanza, at the southern extremity of the lake, and to the eastward, beyond the escape of the Nile, to the north-eastern corner of Victoria Lake, where by a strait they gain access to another lake, in quest of salt. Captain Speke believes this lake to be the Baringu of Krapf, which he, from information obtained through the natives, called Salt Lake, most likely because there are salt islands on it, which reasoning I deduce, says the captain, from the fact that on my former expedition, when the Arabs first spoke to me of the Little Luta Nzigé, they described it as a salt lake belonging to the Great Nyanza, yet not belonging to it, when further pressed upon the subject. The waters of Lake Victoria are, it is to be observed, purely fresh and sweet.

"Dr. Krapf," Captain Speke is made to say in the Report of the Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society (Athenæum, No. 1861, p. 844,)" further tells us of a river tending from the River Newey, by Mount Kenia, towards the Nile." But there must be an error in this report; what Dr. Krapf said was, speaking of the River Dana: "Its main source was reported to have its rise from a jyāru, or lake, which was the receptacle of the waters of the snowy Kegnia (Kenia), and besides the River Dana there are more than fifteen rivers running from the west and north of the Kegnia. One of these, the Tumbiri, is very large, and flows, according to the report made to me by Ruma wa Kikandi, in a northerly direction to the great lake Baringu (not Baringo and Baringa, as given in the reports and in the map), by which, in the phrase of my informant, you may travel a hundred days along its shores and find no end. To this lake or chain of lakes, as it has been found to be, I have referred in the introduction. The great river Tumbiri is evidently identical with the River Tubiri, mentioned by Mr. Werne as being the name of the White River, Bahr-el-Abiad, at four degrees north latitude of the equator." (Krapf's Travels, Appendix, pp. 545-546.)

Krapf, in the introduction here alluded to (p. xlviii), identified Lake Baringu with Lake Victoria (of which it probably constitutes a portion), for he says, in allusion to Captain Speke's first journey, "It is very remarkable that Captain Speke should have seen the great lake which Rumu wa Kikandi, a native of Uemba, near the snow-capped Kegnia, mentioned to me under the name 'Baringu,' the end of which cannot be found even if you travel a hundred days along its shore,' as my informant expressed himself." Krapf's English editor, Mr. Ravenstein,

a good geographer, did not participate in this view of the matter, for in the capital sketch-map attached to Krapf's work, he distinguishes Lake Baringu from Lake Victoria, and makes the former one of the sources of the Nile on the one hand, and of the Dana on the other.

Captain Speke, alluding to this river tending from Mount Kenia to the Nile, says: "If such is the case, it must be a feeder to the Baringu, whose waters pass off by the Asua River (not the Tumbiri, Tubiri, or Tibiri) into the Nile; for the whole country immediately on the eastern side of the Victoria Nyanza is said by the Arabs, who have traversed it for ivory, to be covered with low rolling hills, intersected only by simple streaks and nullahs from Muanza to the side streak, which is situated on the equator on the northern boundary of the Victoria."

This is, perhaps, the most important point of the whole exploration. If correct, Captains Speke and Grant will have discovered not only the head-reservoirs of the Nile-Ptolemy's east and west lakes-and the long sought-for sources of that river, putting the poet of old, who

wrote

Arcanum natura caput non prodidit ulli,

Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre

to the blush, but actually almost its very springs, in the head-waters of the Kitangulé, descending as they do from the flanks of Mount Mfumbira, the culminating point of the Mountains of the Moon, and from its spurs or offshoots. It appears at first sight scarcely credible that groups of mountains, such as are known to exist on the eastern coast of Africa in nearly the same parallel as Lake Victoria, and of which Kenia and Kilimanjaro may be called the exponents, should not send off any streams of water of magnitude or importance to the west. But Kilimanjaro has, we believe, been shown to be without the basin of Lake Victoria; and if Kenia has a westerly flow, the waters, we are now told by Speke, flow into the Baringu, instead of that lake pouring out its waters on the one side to the Dana, and on the other to the Nile-a much more probable theory than Krapf's. The distance from Muanza, Captain Speke's farthest on the east side of Lake Victoria and Lake Baringu, as placed on the same traveller's map, is not so great as not to lend countenance to the information obtained by the gallant captain from the Arabs, and we see by the close proximity of the sources of the Kitangulé flowing to the Mediterranean, and of the Rusisi flowing to the south, and of the southern extremity of Lake Victoria itself to the head-waters of the Malagarazi, how possible it is that the territory south-west of Kenia may have for the greater part a watershed to the Indian Ocean, leaving only a few "streaks and nullahs" to flow in the opposite direction into Lake Victoria. If such is the case, then, we can bid an eternal farewell to the clamour and heart-burnings that have been so long kept alive upon the subject of the supposed easterly Mountains of the Moon, and the prolonged philological disquisitions that have been raised upon the meaning of the words Moenemoezi, the "Townland Lords" of Cooley, and U-Nyamwesi, the "Moon land" of Beke, or Mwezi, the " Moon" of Burton; save in as far as Ptolemy may have derived the name of the Selene Oros, or "Mountains of the Moon," from the name of the adjacent country, or the style and title of its rulers, and of which Mfumbira, and not the eastern mountains, must now be considered as the

exponent. One straw by which the drowning disputants may still cling presents itself in the bare possibility that Lake Baringu may yet be proved to be Ptolemy's eastern lake, and Lake Victoria his western, and not Lake Victoria the eastern, and Little Luta Nzigé the western*—one of the sources of the Nile being thus in the eastern mountains (Kenia), which might therefore be still upheld as part of Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon, as well as in the Mfumbira. But it is not at all likely that the Alexandrian geographer should have noticed two lakes as the sources of the Nile, both having their tributaries in the same mountains, which he calls the "Mountains of the Moon," just as is the case with Lakes Victoria and Little Luta Nzigé, and he should at the same time have intended to convey that the sources of the Nile were to be found in one group of "Mountains of the Moon" to the west of Lake Victoria, and in another group of "Mountains of the Moon" to the east. It is therefore to be surmised that, although Kenia may yet rear its snow-white head proudly as giving origin to one of the sources of the Sacred River, Mfumbira may be still more justly exalted as giving origin to the headwaters of the two great reservoirs of the Nile, and as the central point of Ptolemy's Mountains of the Moon. The long and oft-disputed claims of the easterly chain to that designation may indeed be fairly considered as for ever disposed of, and with it the question as to "who discovered the sources of the Nile ?"

Proceeding north from Mashondé along the boundary coast of Lake Victoria to the valley of Katonga, which, Captain Speke says, is, from its position on the lake, constantly in view, the land above the lake is beautiful, composed of low sandstone hills, streaked down by small streams-the effect of constant rains-grown all over by gigantic grass, except where numerous villagers have supplanted it by cultivation, or on the deltas, where mighty trees, tall and straight as the blue gums of Australia, usurp the right of vegetation. The bed of Lake Victoria has, we are told, shrunk from its original dimensions, as was also seen in the case of the Uzige Lake; and the moorlands immediately surrounding are covered with a network of large rush drains, with boggy bottoms, as many as one to every mile, and containing, if we understand the report aright, for it is rather obscure at times, at one period a much fuller stream than at the present day, and when the breadth of the lake was double that which now exists. The Mountains of the Moon, Captain Speke went on to say, are wearing down, and so is Africa. Yet this was in what is marked on the map as "the ancient kingdom of Kittara," and which appears to have comprised what are now designated as the two regions of Uganda and Unyoro-the territories comprised between the two lakes, Victoria and Little Luta Nzigé. The latter district, according to Captain Grant, forms a striking contrast to Uganda, although both under the equator. It is of immense size, and thinly inhabited by a spiritless and ill-dressed people, who subsist on grain and sweet potatoes. According to Captain Speke, after crossing over the equator, the con

*It appears that Lake Victoria is called Luta Nzigé, as well as the western lake, whence the denomination of the latter by Captain Speke of Little Luta Nzigé. Luta means "dead," and Nzigé "locust," in consequence of flights of locusts falling dead from fatigue in passing over these extensive sheets of water.

formation of the land appeared much the same, but increased in beauty; the drainage system was, however, now found to run from the lake instead of into it, and a first stream was met with, of moderate dimensions, called the Mworango, and which was said to join the Nile in the kingdom of Unyoro, where its name is changed to Kari. Another stream, of similar characters, called the Luajeré, also a tributary to the Nile, but much shorter than the Mworango, was met with farther west, and between the two was an inlet of the lake, which our travellers named after Sir R. I. Murchison-" Murchison Frith." The palace of Mtesis or Mwesi-the King of Uganda-is situated on this frith.

Still farther to the west, and at nearly the centre of the north end of the lake, the parent of the Nile issues forth in a grand channel that flows over rocks of igneous character twelve feet high, and which constitute the barrier of the lake at that point. This channel was designated after the Emperor Napoleon, thus attaching the name of the present ruler of the French to the main feeder of the Nile-an appropriate tribute to our noble allies, and a graceful acknowledgment of the support ever given by France to the progress of geographical discovery. The Falls themselves were named Ripon Falls, after the President of the Geographical Society when the expedition was set on foot.

Proceeding down the Nile from the Ripon Falls, the river first bisected the continuous sandstone range of hills which extend into Usoga-the first district east of the Napoleon Channel-above the coast line of the lake, rushing north along with mountain-torrent beauty, and then having passed these hills, which are of no great width, it turned through long flats more like a lake than a river, to where it is increased in Unyero by the contribution of the Luajeré and of the Kari or Kaffu; and it continues in this navigable form to the Karuma Falls in Chopi. Our travellers saw "the river rushing along with boisterous violence" beyond this first great obstruction, which so curiously reminds us of the Crophi of Herodotus's informant; and the land began likewise to drop suddenly to the westward, but they were unluckily debarred from following the course of the river, owing to a war that appears to have been waging among the dwellers on its banks...." It was indeed a pity," says Captain Speke, "for not sixty miles from where we stood, by common report, the Little Luta Nzigé" (we hope, if Mr. Baker succeeds in its exploration, he will give it some appropriate and euphonious designation), "which I had taken so much trouble in tracing down its course from the Mountains of the Moon, with its salt islands in it, is said to join the Nile."

Traversing then the district of Ukidi, to the east of the Nile, our travellers reached the utmost limits, or the advanced post of civilisation, at the ivory depôt of Debono-the explorer of the Sobat, said to be a Maltese, and consequently a British subject-and where, notwithstanding their anti-slavery notions, they were received by the Turks with great hospitality. Hence they were enabled to push on to Gondokoro, with a heavily-armed ivory caravan, their route laying over boundless plains producing nothing but scrubby bushes. The tribes through which they passed, with the exception of the Wakuma and Arabs, seemed to be similar in language and origin.

The Nile itself was not again met with till they had passed over some extent of the Madi district, at a spot marked as Miani's Tree, or