92 Chronicles of Science. | Jan., 
after which some members were dismissed. In answer to a request 
sent to Lisbon, a small Portuguese force was sent in 1541, to assist 
the Abyssinians against the Moors. They lost their leader and were 
defeated in the service, and after that were treated with great ingra- 
titude by those whom they went to assist. They left behind them 
a fortified convent of Jesuits, who remained until they were expelled 
from the country in 1633, having made scarcely any converts from 
the primitive form of Christianity held by the natives. 
At the next meeting of the Society, letters were read from Dr. 
Kirk and the Vice-consul at Zanzibar, giving some information 
about the existence of Dr. Livingstone. It seems that a native had 
arrived at the coast from Bagamoyo, who reported that when with 
a party who had travelled the regular route to Wemba and Ma- 
ranga, he had seen a white man, who arrived at the village the 
caravans were passing through, with a party of thirteen blacks, 
which is the number of the young negroes Dr. Livingstone is known 
to have had with him. The white man was not a trader, for he 
refused ivory offered to him. On being shown a number of photo- 
graphs, the native recognized one of Dr. Livingstone as that of the 
white man he had met, though he passed over another better like- 
ness of the same person without remark. Dr. Kirk hoped shortly 
to see the head man of the caravan and the others who accompanied 
him, and thus obtain some further information—but this is sufficient 
to put an end for ever to the account of the man Moosa, whose lies 
it is extraordinary should ever have taken possession of men of un- 
derstanding and knowledge of the subject. An artificial excitement 
on this one topic of the exploration of Central African lakes, engen- 
dered within the walls of the Royal Geographical Society, is the 
only explanation of the phenomenon that clever, cautious, and well- 
informed persons should be taken in by the mendacious accounts of 
men proved to be utterly unworthy of credit, and when once com- 
mitted to an opinion, these men haye maintained with sophistical 
arguments the opinion they had uttered, at the peril of their repu- 
tation for common sense. 
A paper by Mr. Collinson, on a hitherto unexplored part of 
Nicaragua demonstrates the possibility of a railroad over that por- 
tion of Central America. The whole ground had been traversed, — 
the gradients are moderate, the climate comparatively good, and the 
distance not great. 
