MISCELLANY. 



247 



the western frontier of Ugogo, he quitted 

 the beateu path, and, for the remaining 550 

 miles, his line of march lay steadily in a 

 northwestern direction. A few days later, 

 the guides who had been hired in Ugogo 

 deserted, and the trail which the expedi- 

 tion had been following was lost in a laby- 

 rinth of elephant and rhinoceros tracks. 

 Still continuing his march to the north- 

 west, Mr. Stanley's men, with great diiS- 

 culty, forced and cut their way through a 

 dense jungle on the third day after the 

 guides bad deserted. The following two 

 days' march was very trying to the men, 

 who suffered from hunger and thirst, and a 

 halt was ordered until provisions could be 

 got from Suna, a place distant nearly thirty 

 miles. While waiting, the men had two 

 scanty meals of gruel, which was made in 

 a sheet-iron trunk. At a point 400 miles 

 from the sea, Edward Pocock, one of the 

 four Englishmen, died of typhoid fever. 

 Thirty of the blacks were on the sick list, 

 and six had died at Suna. The most stir- 

 ring incident of the entire march to Vic- 

 toria Niyanza was the three-days' battle 

 with the people of the Lewumbu Valley. 

 The savages were soundly whipped, and 

 many of their villages burned. The plun- 

 der of the villages supplied the force with 

 provisions for six days. Stanley lost twen- 

 ty-one men in this little war ; and when, 

 three days later, he numbered the expedi- 

 tion, it was found that there remained only 

 194 men, and the number was still further 

 reduced before he reached the shores of 

 Victoria Niyanza. On his arrival at Kage- 

 hyi, he had only 166 native soldiers and 

 carriers, and three white men. 



The second letter gives an incomplete 

 account of a reconnoissance of the coast of 

 Victoria Niyanza. This reconnoissance was 

 made in a cedar boat, which had been car- 

 ried in sections from the sea-coast. Mr, 

 Stanley, in this boat, the Lady Alice, sur- 

 veyed all the coasts of the lake, sailing 

 over 1,000 miles in fifty-eight days. In the 

 letter which we call the second, Mr. Stanley 

 mentions a previous letter which he wrote 

 at Mtesa, on the north shore of the lake, 

 latitude 20' north, longitude 33 east. 

 There he met Colonel Linaut de Bellefonds, 

 of Gordon's staff, and gave him a letter for 

 transmission to England. Strange to say. 



this letter has not yet reached its destina- 

 tion, while two other letters, one of them 

 of later date, and which were sent via Un- 

 yanyembe to Zanzibar by caravan, have 

 been received. A map accompanies the 

 " second " letter. This map, being based 

 on actual survey, decides the question, 

 long discussed, whether Victoria Niyanza 

 is one lake or a multitude of lakes. It is 

 seen to be one vast sheet of water, with 

 length and breadth nearly equal, but with 

 its largest diameter lying from northeast 

 to southwest. Its extreme northern limit 

 is in latitude 30' north, and its extreme 

 southern limit in latitude 2 south. East 

 and west it reaches longitude 34 30' east, 

 and 31 50' east, respectively. During 

 Stanley's absence from Kagehyi, Frederick 

 Barker, one of his English followers, died 

 there of fever. The newspapers in whose 

 service Mr. Stanley is engaged ought to 

 have attached to his staff a secretary pos- 

 sessed of some little literary tact. Mr. 

 Stanley's own communications are verbose 

 to the last degree : they give no clear 

 idea of the nature of the countries visited ; 

 their inhabitants ; how the expedition ob- 

 tained supplies, etc. The two letters al- 

 ready published purport to give the his- 

 tory of about six months, but they are in 

 volume equal to about one-fourth of Caesar's 

 famous memoirs of the Gallic War, which 

 extended over nine years. 



Pntrefaction arrested by Pressure. A 



communication to the Paris Academy of 

 Sciences, by M. Paul Bert, on the " Influ- 

 ence of Air-Pressure on Fermentation," a 

 summary of which appears in the Academy, 

 states that a piece of meat placed in oxy- 

 gen, with a pressure of twenty-three atmos- 

 pheres, remained from July 26th to August 

 3d without putrescence or bad odor. It 

 consumed in that time 380 cubic centfme- 

 tres of the gas. A similar piece, suspended 

 in a bell-glass full of air at the ordinary 

 pressure, acquired a bad smell, consumed 

 all the oxygen, amounting to 1,185 centi- 

 metres, and was covered with mould. 

 Another trial was made with oxygen at a 

 pressure of forty-four atmospheres ; no 

 oxj-gen was absorbed between December 

 19th and January 8th, and no bad odor 

 was exhaled. M. Bert could eat cutlets 



