450 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON'S ADDRESS— AFRICA. [Mat 25, 1857. 



plorer, Captain Eichard Burton, shall have informed us, whether the 

 large Lake of Uniamesi be not the real feeder of the Nile, or if 

 there really be lofty snow-covered mountains under the equator, as 

 descried in the distance by our missionaries. 



On this latter point I confess myself to have been to a great 

 degree incredulous ; whilst the last observations of Livingstone would 

 lead me to suppose that the Nile, like the Zambesi, is fed from a 

 great interior, boggy, and lacustrine region. 



Again, in bringing home specimens of the white dolomitic rocks 

 which constitute the eastern ridge, at a distance of 300 miles from 

 the shore of Africa, and in expressing his opinion that such rocks 

 range far to the N.N.E., or towards Kilimanjaro, the supposed 

 sources of the Nile, Livingstone arrives at the suggestion, that the 

 whiteness of those mountains near the equator, which the mis- 

 sionaries, who saw them at a distance, took for snow, may truly be 

 nothing more than white quartz rocks and crj^stalline dolomitic lime* 

 stones, which, glittering under a tropical sun, might well be mis- 

 taken. 



Let us hope that the journeys now in progress by our clever 

 and adventurous traveller, Captain Burton, from Mombas or Zanzi- 

 bar, may settle this problem, and also determine the real nature and 

 extent of the supposed great inland sea, on which our learned geo- 

 grapher Cooley has speculated, and of which the missionaries, 

 Krapf, Eebmann, and Erhardt, have given us a rude sketch-map, 

 compiled from heai'say testimony. 



On this and many other collateral points it is not my intention to 

 dilate ; for he who would arrive at a sound conclusion must study 

 the writings of Cooley and McQueen, and all the Portuguese autho- 

 rities, and then collate them with the practical conclusions of Dr. 

 Livingstone, who, having travelled over eleven thousand miles of 

 African ground, and having wandered so long among the sources 

 of the Congo and the Zambesi, is certainly the most valuable witness 

 we can call, when such matters are under discussion. 



Great as are the deserts of Dr. Livingstone as a discoverer of new 

 lands, or as a missionary and philanthropist, his real title to the high 

 estimation of the Geographical Society is, that by astronomical ob- 

 servations he has determined the longitude as well as latitude of so 

 many sites, hitherto entirely unknown to us, and has constructed 

 detailed maps of those regions. On this head indeed the language 

 which Mr. Maclear, the astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, has 



