5i8 



NATURE 



[April 12, 1877 



able size, and receives a river at its west end, the Upper 

 Alexandra Nile, which probably comes from a consider- 

 able distance. Mr. Stanley believes that the Alexandra 

 Nyanza has a marshy connection with Kivu Lake on the 

 south, from which issues the Rusizi, an affluent of the 

 Tanganyika. If then these various connections are ulti- 

 mately verified, the problem of African hydrography be- 

 comes more complicated than ever. The Rusizi will 

 connect the Nile system with Tanganyika, and very 

 shortly, at least, Mr. Stanley believes, the Lukuga will 

 carry the water of the latter to the west — to the Congo, 

 say some. Meantime Mr. Stanley is probably at or has 

 already left Nyangwe. After deciding this question of the 

 connection of Albert and Tanganyika Lakes from that 

 side, he will probably devote himself to the task of tracing 

 down the Lualaba, which, according to Cameron, should 

 bring him into early communication with Dr. Nachtigal, 

 who is to trace up the Congo. 



It may not be uninstructive to point out what is 

 the present state of the problem which these two ex- 

 plorers have set themselves to solve. Our principal 

 scientific authorities on the Congo are still Capt. Tuckey 

 and Prof. Smith, who in 18 16 ascended about 200 

 miles up the river, and who have left us a record 

 yet deserving of study. They left England at a time 

 when the outlet of Mungo Park's Niger was a sub- 

 ject of speculation, and amongst the theories then 

 started, the Congo, as an outlet, held a high place. 

 The same notions of the magnitude of this river ob- 

 tained then, and Capt. Tuckey and his civilian scien- 

 tific staff started with the idea that they would be 

 able to navigate it for hundreds of miles. They had, 

 however, only been in the river some four or five days 

 when Prof. Smith makes this entry in his diary : — " The 

 channel is very narrow and the current never more than 

 three knots . . . everthing yet seems to indicate that the 

 descriptions of the great breadth of the river, the length 

 of its course, &c., have been exaggerated." Again, twelve 

 days afterwards, when they had got considerably further 

 up the river, he writes, " The whole appearance of the 

 river, its numerous sandbanks, low shore, inconsiderable 

 current, narrow channel, seem but little to justify its 

 extravagant fame. Its sources cannot be further inland 

 than those of the Senegal and Gambia." Capt. Tuckey, 

 who ties himself very rigidly to a statement of facts, ven- 

 tures to say that at Fathomless Point the true mouth 

 of the river " is not three miles in breadth ; and al- 

 lowing the mean depth to be forty fathoms and the 

 mean velocity of the stream four and-a-half miles an hour, 

 it will be evident that the calculated volume of water 

 carried to the sea has been greatly exaggerated." The 

 mean velocity of the current higher up the river than the 

 true mouth appears to be about two miles, and Tuckey 

 remarks that they found no difficulty in rowing the gigs 

 to the foot of Casan Yellala against the current. 



These falls or rapids (Yellala) deserve some notice. 

 They extend continuously for about twenty miles along 

 the river, and are very much like the rapids on the Somer- 

 set Nile between Foweira and Magungo, where Col. 

 Gordon reports a fall of 700 feet in a space of ten or fifteen 

 miles. On August 14, 1816, Prof Smith says, "We dis- 

 covered the celebrated fall of Yellala, at a distance of 

 about a mile and a half But how much were we disap- 

 pointed in our expectations on seeing a pond of water 

 only with a small fall of a few hundred yards." They 

 had been led to expect a second Niagara, and instead of 

 that, found a rapid having a perpendicular fall of thirty 

 feet in a slope of 300 yards formed of a descending bed 

 of mica slate. The width of the river is very various, 

 sometimes expanding to half a mile. It is compared by 

 Tuckey to Loch Tay and by Smith to the Drammen, in 

 Norway, at the bridge. Sometimes it contracts to 100 

 yards ; in one place it is reduced to fifty yards in breadth, 

 but at this point the stream rushes through at the rate 



of eight miles an hour. The rapid and considerable rise 

 of the water during the rainy season is largely accounted 

 for by the fact that " the hills do not absorb any of the 

 water that falls, the whole of which is carried direct to 

 the river by gullies and ravines, with which the hills are 

 furrowed all over." These hills are composed entirely of 

 slate, with masses of quartz and syenite, and their extreme 

 barrenness forms one of the most striking features of the 

 country. 



It would appear from Capt. Tuckey's and Prof. Smith's 

 reports that the farthest point they reached on the river 

 was at least 1,000 feet above the sea, and as this point is- 

 about 800 miles in a direct line from Nyangwe, which 

 Cameron has fixed at 1,400 feet, the connection between 

 the Congo and Lualaba on the question of level alone 

 seems very doubtful. 



The Casai and Kwango are doubtless the chief affluents 

 of the Congo ; it may have tributaries from the north and 

 north-west behind the coan ranges, but these will be of 

 secondary importance. As soon as we get east of the ' 

 Congo water-parting, we begin to descend to the great val- 

 ley of the Lualaba, Livingstone's "central line of drainage." 

 This river occupies the centre of a saucer-like depression, 

 one lip being probably the Congo water-parting, the other 

 the Bambarre, or perhaps Kabogo Mountains to the west 

 of Tanganyika. The fall of this depression is from south 

 to north ; commencing at the Katanga copper mines of 

 the PomlDeiros, it runs to Lake Kassali 1,750 feet, to 

 Nyangwe 1,400 feet ; thence to the " Unvisited Lake" of 

 Livingstone, the " Great Lake " of Poncet, or the " San- 

 korra " of Cameron, probably also the " Liba " of the 

 Benin slaves, and so on by the Shari to Lake Chad, 830 

 feet. 



From these statements, then, it will be seen that the 

 solution of the hydrographical problem of Western 

 Central Africa is difficult to arrive at on the data we at 

 present possess, and that to advocate any special theory 

 may be rash. The Congo theory is a fascinating one, 

 but-the levels seem against it. However, with two such 

 men as Nachtigal and Stanley in the field, the solution 

 of this problem, as of others almost equally interesting, 

 will soon be discovered. 



THE LONDON INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY I 



T^E give below a series of extracts from an admirable letter 

 addressed by Major Donnelly, the chief of the scientific 

 staff of the Science and Art Department, to Sir Sydney Waterlow, 

 with reference to the proposed Industrial University to be estab* 

 lished by the City Guilds in London : — 



London, March 14, 1877 



Dear Sir Sydney Waterlow, — In reply to your request, 

 I am happy to place at your service such sugge-tions, with 

 regard to the proposed "City Guilds' Industrial University," as 

 my experience in connection with the Science and Art Depart- 

 ment enables me to offer. . . . 



Under anything like a broad view of the subject it would bo 

 difficult to say what branch of learnmg should be omitted in a- 

 Industrial University. But if we confine ourselves to what i 

 practicable with the probable means immediately at command, 

 and if we look to commence by supplying that of which ther e is 

 the greatest want, we shall, I think, have no hesitation — consi 

 ing the relative facilities for obtaining instruction in the diffe 

 branches of knowledge — in deciding that science as now msA 

 stood, and particularly Applied Science, has the first call onl 

 attention. 



. . . The Industrial University might be commenced by 

 blishing professorships with the necessary laboratories, tutc 

 staff, &c., in the following branches of Science and Art :- 



Mathematics (Pure and Applied and Practical Geometry). 



Chemistry. 



Physics (Heat, Light, Magnetism, and Electricity). 



Mechanics (Practical Mechanics, Machinery, and Mad 

 Drawing). 



Engineering and Building Construction ; and in 



