GEOGEAPHIOAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1869. 



299 



imperial troops. No safe-conduct would be 

 respected. But the daring young French 

 lieutenant braved all dangers, and with his 

 little company marched westward on the 31st 

 of January, and, taking a circuitous route to 

 avoid marauding parties, came to the highlands 

 overlooking Tali-fu, after a wearisome and 

 perilous journey, on the 29th of February. 

 Here they were detained for a few days till the 

 Sultan's will could be ascertained respecting 

 them. They were finally permitted to enter 

 the city, and marched to the palace, where the 

 insults of the mob nearly led to retaliation 

 and their destruction. The Sultan at first 

 received them favorably, but a .few hours later 

 sent them orders to leave the city the next 

 day, and seemed resolved to find a pretext for 

 putting them to death. Nothing but the reso- 

 lute firmness and decision of Lieutenant Gar- 

 nier saved them from being brutally murdered. 

 Making their escape as rapidly as possible, 

 aided by a Catholic missionary whom they 

 found in the mountains, they reached Tong- 

 chuan-fii to find their chief dead. Disinterring 

 his body, they made the best of their way with 

 it to Siii-Chiu-fu, the nearest port on the Yang- 

 tse-Kiang, and embarked there for Shanghai, 

 from whence they returned to France. The 

 whole distance travelled from Cratich, the vil- 

 lage on the Me-King, which was their real point 

 of departure, to Shanghai, was 5,392 miles, of 

 which 3,625 were surveyed with care, and the 

 positions in the unknown parts rectified by 

 astronomical observations. They found the 

 plateau, in which the five rivers we have 

 already named take their rise, only about 240 

 miles wide. It is between 28 and 30 N. lat- 

 itude, and forms the southeast slope of the 

 great plateau of Thibet. 



10. ATISTKALASIA offers little in the way of 

 new discovery during the year 1869. A new ex- 

 pedition in search of Leechardt set out from 

 Melbourne in May or June, 1869, but they have 

 not yet been heard from. An expedition (the 

 third) also set out in December, 1868, to ex- 

 plore the interior from Northern Australia. 

 The interior of the continent is gradually 

 becoming known, and the old ideas of its ter- 

 rible drought and desolation are dying out. It 

 is a vast basin, like Central Africa and our 

 own Great Salt Lake Basin, most of the rivers 

 of which do not find their way to the sea, but 

 are swallowed up in the sands. Hence there 

 are extensive salt lakes, and soda deposits, and 

 in a dry season a terrible drought, but water 

 is at no time very far below the surface, and 

 these lands will, with proper care and the sink- 

 ing of artesian wells, eventually prove fertile, 

 and excellent both for grains and pasturage. 



11. AFRICA offers far less than usual of inter- 

 est to the geographer during the past year. 

 The gleanings of science, from the explora- 

 tions connected with the Abyssinian War, are 

 still spread before the public, and Abyssinia, 

 from being an almost unknown, has become 

 perhaps the best known (after Egypt) of the 



African states. Dr. Livingstone's letters, 

 though unsatisfactory, seem to imply that the 

 Tanganyika, and another large lake west of it, 

 perhaps an unexpected extension of the Albert 

 Nyanza southward, will prove to be the 

 sources of the Nile. But we shall know more 

 definitely what he has discovered if, as there 

 is reason to hope, he emerges from his long 

 tour of exploration either on the west coast, 

 or on the lower Nile. 



In the region lying between the Zambesi 

 and the Limpopo, Carl Mauch's gold-fields are 

 still attracting attention, though the difficulties 

 of the route thither are sufficient to deter any 

 but the hardiest observers. The full narrative 

 of Mr. St. Vincent Erskine's discovery of the 

 mouth of the Limpopo and its course from its 

 junction with its great affluent, the Lipaluli, 

 has been received, and the journey appears 

 to have been one of great peril and suffering, 

 but happily a successful one. The mouth of 

 the river was found in latitude 25 15' 19" (the 

 mean of two observations) south, and about 

 the 34th meridian of east longitude from 

 Greenwich. 



Mosilikatse, the formidable chief of the Ma- 

 tabele, a Kaffir ruler whose name was a word 

 of terror across the whole breadth of the con- 

 tinent in South Central Africa, died in the be- 

 ginning of 1869, and his son Kuruman, a man 

 of less ability, but also, it is said, less san- 

 guinary disposition, has succeeded him. 



Carl Mauch, the German geographer and ex- 

 plorer, has set out on an expedition from 

 South Africa northward to Egypt. His past 

 success in dealing with the natives encourages 

 some hope that he may be successful in his 

 long and perilous journey. The French dur- 

 ing the years 1867 and 1868 employed one of 

 the vessels of their African squadron in ex- 

 ploring the region of the Gablin, and pene- 

 trated for a considerable distance up the Ogowai. 

 The result of their explorations beyond de- 

 fining the course of the Ogowai, and some 

 brief notice of the Fans and other tribes, al- 

 ready described by Du Chaillu and Winwood 

 Reade, does not seem to have been of partic- 

 ular interest. The latter explorer went out 

 again in May, 1868, to endeavor to explore 

 the course of the Niger and the mountainous 

 region lying back from the Gold Coast. He 

 was thwarted in his endeavors to reach his 

 destination by way of Lagos or "Whydah, and 

 went to Sierra Leone, from whence he pene- 

 trated 400 miles into the interior, and reached 

 the Niger, or Quorra River. He then returned 

 to Sierra Leone, and, descending the coast to 

 Monrovia, Liberia, started January 14, 1870, 

 for Boporah, a large Mandingo town in the 

 interior, accompanied by Prof. Blyden, and 

 some other Liberians. 



Gerhard Rohlfs has again been exploring some 

 of the oases of the Sahara, and the Berber lands. 



The opening of the Suez Canal, an important 

 geographical event, is elsewhere described in 

 this volume. (See EGYPT.) 



