258 



NA TURE 



{July 14, 1887 



of such regions of depression as the valleys of the Rhone and 

 Rhine, the low-lying region of Hungary, and the plain of 

 Poland. 



News of the African traveller, Herr Gottlob Ad. Krause, has 

 been received at Berlin through the missionary Steiner from 

 Christiansborg on the Gold Coast. On April 16, Herr Krause 

 arrived at Salaga, north of the Appanti kingdom ; proceed- 

 ing in a northerly direction he succeeded in reaching the 

 vicinity of Timbuctoo. At present, most likely, he has arrived 

 at the Togo coast. 



THE PROGRESS OF GEOGRAPHY. 



A T the anniversary meeting of the Royal Geographical 

 •*^ Society, held on May 23, 1887, General R. Strachey, 

 the Vice-President, delivered an address, from which we take 

 the following extracts : — 



The attention of geographers during the year, as far as 

 regards Africa, has been chiefly directed to the basin of 

 the Congo, where many explorers, of various nationalities, 

 have been employed in exploring and surveying the numerous 

 streams which combine to make the Congo one of the greatest 

 fluvial systems of the world. Other explorers have been 

 engaged in the same region in examining into its economical 

 and prospective commercial resources, but at present without 

 definite results. An excellent summary of the geographical 

 work done in the Congo region up to the middle of last year was 

 given to the Society in this hall, in June last, by Sir Francis de 

 Winton, who had then recently returned from his two years' 

 administration of the country. The most important of the new 

 explorations he described was that of Lieut. Wissmann 

 and his party, who had embarked on the upper waters of the 

 Kassai River, near the part made known to us by Livingstone 

 and Cameron, and navigated it to its junction with the Congo. 

 Since then Dr. Wolff, one of Wissmann's companions, has ex- 

 plored the Sankuru, a large northern tributary of the Kassai, 

 and found it navigable for a long distance. One result of this 

 latter exploration is to show that another navigable river of the 

 far interior, the Lomami, enters the Sankuru from the north- 

 east, and that it is a distinct river from the Lomami of Cameron, 

 recently ascended by Grenfell, which enters the Congo near 

 Stanley Falls. 



The direction which the Kassai takes — in a long curve, from 

 south-east to west-north-west — causes it to be the recipient of 

 nearly all the drainage of the southern half of the Congo basin, 

 and near its junction with the main stream it adds to its volume 

 the waters of another great tributary, the Quango, besides the 

 Mfini from a chain of great lakes further north. The united 

 waters are poured into the Congo through the Kwa, which, 

 according to Mr. Grenfell's measurement, is contracted in its 

 passage through a range of low hills, and at its mouth is only 

 700 yards wide (a little higher up only 450 yards) ; the depth of the 

 swiftly flowing stream Mr. Grenfell was unable to ascertain, as 

 no bottom was touched with aline 120 feet long. 



The prospective value to the Congo State of the Kassai, with 

 its immense mileage of navigable waters flowing through fertile 

 plains, is acknowledged on all hands. Already stations have 

 been founded on its banks, and Portuguese traders are choosing 

 the newly-discovered river route in preference to their old in- 

 land road into the interior from Loanda. It has been during 

 the past few months repeatedly reascended by river steamers, 

 once by Sir Francis de Winton himself. 



Equal in importance and extent have been the explorations 

 and surveys along the main river and many of its tributaries 

 carried out by Mr. Grenfell. The chief of these explorations 

 were noticed by the Marquis of Lome in the Address of last 

 year ; and a brief general account of his surveys was given, 

 together with a reduction of his admirable series of river charts, 

 in the October number of our Proceedings. Since then Mr. 

 Grenfell has added to his achievements the ascent of the unknown 

 portion of the Quango between its junction with the Kassai 

 (or Kwa) and the Falls of Kikunji, which latter was the farthest 

 point, coming down river, reached by a former traveller. Von 

 Mechow. 



Other considerable additions have been made to our know- 

 ledge of the Congo region, by Lieuts. Kund and Tappen- 

 beck, members of a scientific Expedition sent out in 1884 by the 

 German African Association. These two courageous travellers, 

 instead of following the courses of the rivers like others, and 



gleaning information only of the country and people along the 

 banks, struck across the country, first from Stanley Pool to the 

 south, and thence towards the east, crossing in succession all the 

 southern tributaries, from the Quango inclusive to the Lukenye, 

 beyond the Kassai ; a toilsome and dangerous march of about 

 600 miles. Another member of the same Expedition. Dr. 

 Biittner, made also a land journey, of less extent, but not less 

 interest. Starting from San Salvador, the old capital of the 

 Congo, he travelled eastward and crossed the Quango, reaching 

 the capital of a Negro potentate named Kasongo, whence he 

 struck northward to the main Congo above Stanley Pool. 

 Much valuable information regarding the configuration of the 

 country and the ethnology and products of the interior was ob- 

 tained on these two journeys. We learn, for example, that the 

 whole western section, to a distance some 400 miles inland, is a 

 hilly country cut up by deep valleys, to which succeeds, further 

 inland, a wide stretch of undulating plains, wooded only along 

 the courses of streams, and that it is only when the eastern 

 side of the Kassai is i-eached that continuous tropical forest is 

 met with. 



North of the Congo the French have been active both in com- 

 pleting the pioneer exploration of their new possessions and in 

 laying down with scientific precision large tracts of country im- 

 perfectly known. The most important work of the latter kind 

 is that of Capt. Rouvier, the representative of France on the 

 joint Commission for laying down the boundary between the 

 Congo State and the French possessions. This accomplished 

 surveyor fixed numerous positions by a long series of observa- 

 tions both for longitude and latitude, and his Report, which will 

 be accompanied by an atlas of thirty-eight maps on various 

 scales, will form a solid contribution to our geographical know- 

 ledge of the region. An important pioneer exploration, about 

 the same time, was made by M. Jacques de Brazza, brother of 

 the eminent traveller, to the north and east of the French sta- 

 tions on the River Ogowe, undertaken soon after Mr. Grenfell's 

 discovery of the magnitude of the Mobangi, and apparently 

 with the object of ascertaining whether that great river flowed 

 within the French boundary as fixed at the Berlin Conference. 

 After a journey of a month's duration through dense forests, M. 

 de Brazza emerged on an open plain, through which flowed, not 

 the Mobangi, but the Sekoli, an independent tributary of the Congo- 

 lying far to the westward. After a fruitless attempt had been made 

 to penetrate beyond this river, his party built canoes and de- 

 scended the Sekoli to its mouth. It has been recently announced 

 that by arbitration the French boundary has been extended a 

 little farther to the east than fixed by the Berlin Conference, so 

 as to include the right bank of the IMobangi. A complete and 

 very useful resume of all the geographical work accomplished by 

 recent French explorers in the Ogowe-Congo region, by Major 

 de Lannoy de Bissy, was contributed to our Proceedings for 

 December last, illustrated by a map reduced from the French 

 surveys. 



Public interest has recently been directed towards the region 

 north of the Congo, and the practicable routes it may offer to 

 the Niam-Niam countries and the Egyptian Soudan, in con- 

 sequence of the despatch of the Expedition under Mr. Stanley, 

 for the relief and rescue of Emin Bey, which has adopted the 

 Congo route to the Upper Nile in preference to the more direct 

 and shorter route inland from Zanzibar. A paper giving 

 resume of all published information regarding this region was 

 recently read in this hall by our accomplished young colleague, 

 Mr. J. T. Wills. Since then, you have had before you the 

 greatest of all travellers in this little-known region, Dr. Junker,^ 

 and heard his own account of his six years' explorations. Th^ 

 wide open plain country lying between the Congo and the Nile 

 which Dr. Junker described to us, is watered by numeroi: 

 streams, the chief of which, the Welle-Makua, flows westerly i^ 

 the direction of the Upper Mobangi, and, judging from D/ 

 Junker's maps, it is difficult to dispute his conclusion, in whicl 

 Mr. Wills agrees, that the two rivers are the same. Othe 

 geographers believe that the Welle-Makua belongs to the Shai'_ 

 system and flows into Lake Chad. The alternative offers one- 

 of those problems in which speculative geographers seem to 

 delight ; but in this case it will not be long before a solution is 

 arrived at in the only satisfactory way — namely, by actual ex- 

 ploration. Meantime we learn, by the latest news from the 

 Congo, that Mr. Stanley has chosen to adopt a somewhat more- 

 direct route to Emin Pasha than that first proposed — namely^f 

 from the Congo near Stanley Falls by land to the shores 

 the Albert Nyanza. 



