212 MACQUEEN ON THE GEOGRAPHY [May 9, 1859. 



have been the means of misguiding all ancient inquirers about that mysterious' 

 mountain. 



My positions were fixed by astronomical observations, certainly under 

 painful and considerable difficulties, owing to my constantly impaired 

 general state of health : weakness and blindness not being the least of these 

 difficulties which I had to contend with. My latitudes were taken by the 

 altitude of stars, at nearly every stage, on an average from ten to fifteen miles 

 apart. I also fixed some crucial stations, the principal points for delineating 

 the country by lunars, on which I place great reliance, as the means of the 

 masses of them which 1 took show so little deviation. The intermediate 

 distances I compassed very closely ; the altitudes of the country I traversed I 

 determined by boiling thermometer ; on which I also place very great reli- 

 ance. We had a thermometer and pedometer, and several chronometers. The 

 performance of these instruments was anything but satisfactory : indeed, 

 finally, I had to rig up a string and bullet pendulum to beat time whilst 

 taking my lunars in the latter stage of the journey. There now can be no 

 doubt that this great lake, the Nyanza (Captain Speke now pointing to the 

 map), is the great reservoir of the Nile, and that its waters indubitably extend 

 northwards from the position visited by me on its southern extremity to 

 85° north-latitude, lying across the equator, and washes out that supposed line 

 of mountains, called the Mountains of the Moon, which stands so conspicu- 

 ously in all our atlases. 



The President (to Mr. Macqueen). — In short he carries his lake through 

 your mountains. 



Dr. Bigsby, F.R.G.S., desired some farther information concerning the 

 people, their civility, numbers, and mode of subsistence. 



The President thought such matter foreign to the subject of the paper. 



Mr. Macqueen, f.r.g.s., said the question of the sources of the Nile had 

 cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no material 

 error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had ascribed to them, 

 namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of 35°, and a little northward 

 of the equator. That was the principal source of the White Nile. The 

 mountains there were exceedingly high, from the equator north to Kaffa 

 Cnarea. All the authorities, from east, west, north, or south, now perfectly 

 comi)etent to form judgments upon such a matter, agreed with him ; and 

 among them were the officers commanding the Egyptian commission. It was 

 impossible they could all be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very 

 short distance of it ; he was more than 180 miles from Mombas, and he saw 

 snow upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from 

 them, and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the tempera- 

 ture. The line of perpetual congelation, it was well known, was 17,000 feet 

 above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile by 

 the Egyptian expedition. It was then given as 3° 30' N. lat. and 31° S. 

 lat. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a sufficient depth 

 of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the velocity of the current 

 one-quarter of a mile per hour. The journals also gave a specific and daily 

 current, the depth and width of the river, and everything, indeed, connected 

 with it. Surely, looking at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom 

 above the level of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the 

 sources of the Nile must be 6000 or 8000 feet above the level of the sea, and 

 still much below the line of the snow, which was 6000 or 8000 feet farther 

 above them. He deeply regretted he was un^le to complete the diagram 

 for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was more import- 

 ant than any others he had previously given. It contained the journey over 

 Africa from sea to sea, second only to that of Dr. Livingstone. But all the. 

 rivers coming down from the mountains in question, and running south east- 



