་ THE results of geographical discovery in Africa during the last five-and-twenty years have been so vast, as compared with the progress of explorations prior to that time, that it is difficult to realize the additions which have been made to our knowledge without recalling the maps of our youth, and contrasting the large blank space marked "unexplored," which distinguished them, with the most modern delineations of the continent. The white tracts are now reduced to comparatively slender limits, the great problems which have for centuries puzzled geographers are all solved by actual investigation, or by inference which almost amounts to moral certainty, and but little will soon remain for the explorer to do beyond filling up details and verifying or rectifying previous discoveries. It is perhaps natural that those who have been engaged in ́opening up these interesting regions should regard somewhat jealously the estimation in which their achievements are held, and that each should claim the full amount at least of the credit to which he may consider himself entitled. It must therefore be always a somewhat invidious task to compare the work of men who all deserve the highest praise for the exhibition of those qualities which are essential to successful exploration, and to assume to decide upon the merit of their respective discoveries. While perhaps among geographers there might be little difference of opinion upon this point, the general public is more apt to take its impressions from accidental circumstances, and he who records his own exploits most ostentatiously, or has friends or supporters especially interested in doing so for him, is likely often to wear the laurels which properly belong to the more modest but really successful explorer. It is only right, therefore, that the claims of Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. What led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. A Walk across Africa. CAPTAIN J. A. GRANT. CAPT. JOHN HANNING SPEKE. The Last Journals of David Livingstone. By HORACE WALLER. Central Africa. COLONEL C. CHAILLE LONG. Letters. H. M. STANLEY, New York Herald. those who are no longer alive to support them themselves, or who shrink from the ungrateful task of vindicating their own achievements, should receive the consideration to which they are properly entitled, and that we should dismiss from our minds all personal considerations in awarding to each the merit which is justly his due. In order to enable our readers to perceive at a glance the work that has been done in Equatorial Africa during the last quarter of a century, and to appreciate the more easily by whom this work has principally been achieved, we have appended a map, based chiefly upon the very excellent work of Mr. Petermann in a late number of his Mittheilungen. The best test of the value of exploration is to be found in the material which it affords for the construction of maps. And when we affirm that the discoveries of Speke, Livingstone, and Cameron up to this date may be said to furnish our entire map of Equatorial Africa, no higher testimony can be adduced of the nature and extent of their labors. It will be found, on investigation, that all subsequent travellers in the regions first made known to us by the two former of these explorers have either confirmed by actual examination the truth of inferences which circumstances prevented them from verifying at the time, or they have filled in details completing, but not materially altering, the general outlines of their maps of the topographical features of the country. In a word, while these travellers have solved the main problems of African geography, those who have followed them have made discoveries which have confirmed the solution. It is not, therefore, from any wish to detract from the merits of these latter that we are compelled to award them a second rank in African exploration, but because the field had necessarily become limited by the discoveries which had been made before they entered upon it. The region explored or mapped by Livingstone consists of all the country west of Lake Tanganyka, as far north as Nyangwé, and as far west as Cameron's route, extending southerly to the limits of the map, including the Zambesi and Lake Nyassa; his route from the mouth of the Zambesi to St. Paul de Loando, crossing Cameron's from Zanzibar to Benguela, which is indicated on the map. The magnitude and importance of Speke's discoveries, which now seem in danger of being appropriated or ignored, have induced us to reproduce a facsimile of the map published by him in 1864. It presented to the world for the first time the solution of the great Nile mystery, and although at the time doubts were thrown upon the accuracy of his observations and his inferences, they have since turned out to be substantially correct, and all subsequent investigations have only proved conclusively the justice of his claim to the much-coveted title of "Discoverer of the Sources of the Nile." Although the labors of Livingstone were protracted over a longer period, and in many respects are unrivalled in the field of African exploration, it was beyond question the good fortune of the late Captain Speke to carry off the blue ribbon of geographical discovery. It is with the view of making this fact clear to our readers, and of justifying this assertion, that we propose, in the first instance, briefly to call their attention to the work accomplished by this intrepid and successful explorer. When Speke first entered Africa, twenty years ago, in company with Captain Burton, the three great lakes of Tanganyka, Victoria and Albert Nyanza were unknown, and the extreme limit of Nile exploration was at Miani's tree, in north latitude 3° 24'; to the south of this point all was mystery. Scarcely anything had been done from the east coast; Krapff, Rebman, Baron von der Decken, and others, were attempting to push in from the Suwahili coast, immediately south of the equator, and were rewarded by discovering the lofty peaks of Kenia and Kilimandjaro. Livingstone was far to the south, upon the Zambesi, and beyond the vague tradition of a great lake due west from Zanzibar, all was unknown. It was to the discovery of this lake that Captains Burton and Speke applied themselves, and in the early part of the year 1858 they stood upon its shores. In consequence of their prostrate condition, resulting from the hardships of their journey, they could do little towards its survey; nevertheless, perceiving the importance of determining whether this lake had an outlet to the north, for in that case it was unquestionably the source of the Nile, they explored it in that direction until they perceived a horseshoe range of mountains surrounding its northern end, and rendering the hypothesis of an outlet impossible. From native sources the information was derived that the river Rusizi, having its rise in a small lake in the mountains, after a southerly course entered Lake Tanganyka at its northern extremity. The range and the river appear in Speke's map; as a topographical feature, the range is of the highest importance, for all subsequent exploration has proved that Captain Speke's theory, founded upon the discovery of this range, must be correct, namely, that it is part of the great African watershed, all the streams flowing towards the east and north going to feed the lakes, small or great, which are the reservoir of the Nile, while those which flow to the south and west go to swell the waters of the Congo. We shall allude more fully to this hypothesis in connection with Livingstone's discoveries and theory. On their return journey from Lake Tanganyka to Zanzibar Captain Burton was taken ill at Kazeh, and Captain Speke, hearing rumors of a lake to the northwards, pushed on alone in that direction, and was rewarded, in July, 1858, after a toilsome march of two hundred and twenty-six miles in twenty-five days, by finding himself standing on the shores of a mighty unknown inland sea, with a water horizon, called by the natives Ukerewe, and which he subsequently named the Victoria Nyanza. The conviction at once forced itself upon his mind that here at last was the true source of the Nile, and that if he could reach its northern shores he would find its outlet to be the mighty river whose origin had been the problem of ages. Returning to England full of this project, he laid his views before the Royal Geographical Society, and an expedition was equipped to prosecute the exploration of this lake, to be undertaken by Captains Speke and Grant. In January, 1862, the two travellers again struck the western shores of the lake, and following them reached the kingdom of Uganda; in doing so they crossed the Kageera River, which they then pronounced to be the largest affluent of the lake, and therefore the most important of the headwaters of the Nile. They discovered, on investigation, that this river has its source in sundry lakes in the same mountain-range that Speke had already discovered at the northern end of Tanganyka. As a further confirmation of his theory, Captain Speke found not only that the two lakes were separated from each other by mountain-ranges, but that the level of Lake Tanganyka was considerably lower than that of the Victoria Nyanza; any communication, therefore, between the former lake and the Nile was a manifest impossibility. Captain Grant's illness unfortunately prevented him from accompanying Speke in his explorations along |