340 



GEOGEAPIIIOAL EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN 1871. 



Egyptian pacha, was making but slow progress 

 with his little army in exploring the Giraffe 

 Arm of the White Nile, but at last accounts 

 had reached Gondokoro, and was pushing on 

 to the Albert Nyanza. 



Dr. Livingstone has been heard from, but in 

 a singularly indefinite way, and never except 

 at old dates or through intermediates. An- 

 other expedition h*as been fitted out in Eng- 

 land to go in search of him, and an enterpris- 

 ing American newspaper professes to have sent, 

 on its own account, one of its correspondents 

 to find and relieve him ; but as yet he is 

 supposed to be in the vicinity of Lake Tang- 

 anyika. 



Dr. Schweinfurth, a German explorer, of 

 whom we have in former volumes given some 

 account, has made his way to the west of the 

 Lake Albert Nyanza, and 210 miles west of 

 the White Nile, but does not confirm Piaggia's 

 rumor of a great lake so far to the west. At 

 the latest reports he had discovered a river, 

 the Uelle, flowing westward, and probably into 

 Lake Chad, showing that he had crossed the 

 water-shed of the White Nile westward. He 

 had also visited the country of the Nyam- 

 Nyams, reputed cannibals, but found their pro- 

 pensities for human flesh had been greatly 

 overrated. 



In South Central Africa, the celebrated 

 German traveller, Carl Mauch, is still exploring 

 the regions of gold and diamonds in the Trans- 

 vaal Republic and Basuto-Land, and has add- 

 ed to his fame by the development of new 

 gold-fields. There are also reports more full 

 than have been previously given of explora- 

 tions of this region by Mr. Thomas Baines in 

 1868-'G9. The existence of valuable diamonds 

 and of gold deposits in large quantities be- 

 tween the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers, and 

 on their affluents, does not any longer admit of 

 a question; but the country is so wild, the 

 climate so bad, and the facilities of transporta- 

 tion so slight, that it will be long before it 

 competes, so fairly as its intrinsic merits would 

 justify, with the gold-fields of Australia, or of 

 our own Pacific and Central gold-regions. 



VIII. AUSTRALIA. There is little of interest 

 to record respecting this island continent. 

 Explorations in the interests of settlement 

 have been made into the interior in directions 

 not heretofore attempted, and it has been 

 found that, so far from being a burning desert 

 whose rivers all disappeared in the thirsty 

 sands, much of it is a well-watered, fertile, and 

 productive country. 



IX. POLYNESIA. In New Zealand, the em- 

 inent geologist, Dr. Haast, has continued his 

 investigations, and they are now nearly com- 

 pleted, when the physical features of the two 

 islands which go to make up this colony will 

 be as thoroughly known as those of any of our 

 own States. Some explorations have also 

 been attempted in Papua or New Guinea, but 

 the natives are too hostile to permit much in- 

 vestigation. 



The New Caledonia group, nominally belong- 

 ing to France, but in which an almost constant 

 warfare with the fierce, robust cannibal-island- 

 ers has been necessary from its first occupation 

 by the French in 1853, has recently attracted 

 considerable attention, and the published nar- 

 ratives of several scientific explorers have led 

 to inquiry as to its desirableness for settle- 

 ment. The islands, like most of the Polyne- 

 sian groups, are surrounded by coral-reefs, 

 and but for the frequent breaks in these reefs 

 it would be impossible for ships to find any 

 harbor. New Caledonia, the largest island 

 of the group, is about 220 miles long and 

 40 wide. It is 600 miles east of Queens- 

 land, and nearly TOO north of New Zealand. 

 The climate is delightful, except occasional 

 typhoons; the island being surrounded by a 

 broad sound, inside the reefs, forming nu- 

 merous quiet, land-locked harbors. It is well 

 watered, and for the most part very fer- 

 tile. The plantations of sugar-cane, guava, 

 and cotton, flourish abundantly, and are very 

 profitable. 



Trepang, or Beche-de-la-mer, an edible sea- 

 slug, greatly prized by Chinese epicures, is more 

 plentiful there than anywhere else in Ocean- 

 ica. It is the home of the sandal-wood tree, 

 and its cocoa-nut palms, its melaleucas, and 

 other aromatic forest-trees, its stately pines, 

 and its exquisitely-beautiful ferns and climbing 

 plants, make it an Eden of beauty. There are 

 no wild beasts of great size, but the birds excel 

 in beauty of plumage and variety those of the 

 other islands of the Pacific. Fish are abun- 

 dant, but some of them at certain seasons of 

 the year are poisonous. The dugong, a species 

 of sea-cow belonging to the seal family, of 

 great size and somewhat vicious, the shark, 

 and many other predatory fish, are numerous. 

 The inhabitants are physically among the finest 

 specimens of the Polynesian race, with curly 

 and frizzled (but not woolly) hair, color be- 

 tween an iron -gray and bronze, muscular, 

 lithe, and active, and possessed of great pow- 

 ers of endurance. They seem to have very 

 few religious ideas, but are superstitious in re- 

 gard to evil spirits. Many of them are em- 

 ployed on the plantations of the whites, and, 

 if well treated, well paid, and fed abundantly 

 with taro (bread-fruit), yams, fish, etc., are 

 very faithful and industrious; but, if abused 

 and maltreated, as too many of them are, they 

 are apt to run away. Most of them seem at 

 times to have an uncontrollable longing for 

 human flesh. They are skilful in all the arts 

 of hunting and fishing, and wood-lore, but do 

 not manifest much taste for education, though 

 a few of them have become very well edu- 

 cated, and are now employed in teaching. 

 They are fast dying out, the white^men's vices, 

 and the terrible scourge of those islands, con- 

 sumption, the result of a scrofulous taint, car- 

 rying them off by hundreds, while the wars 

 of the nations of different islands with each 

 other aid in their depopulation. 



