Sept. 1 6, 1880] 



NATURE 



479 



The Mountain Lapps, by Lient. G. T. Temple ; Note on a 

 Chilian Tutniihis, by Mr. J. li. Mad^e ; and JnJia tin Home 

 of Gunpo'^udcr on Philological Evidence, by Dr. Gustav Oppert. 



SECTION E.— Geographv. 

 The President read some letters of a very interesting character 

 from Mr. Joseph Thomson, received by the Royal Geographical 

 Society's East African Expedition. The following are passages 

 from this correspondence : — 



"Karema, or Musamwira, Lake Tanganyika, 

 "March 27, 18S0. 

 " I have failed in my attempt to reach Jendwe by way of the 

 Lukuga and Kabuire. I left Kasenga (or Mtowa) on January 

 19, witli all the confidence of a young lion which liad not yet 

 known a reverse, and six weeks after I returned to the same 

 place as meek as a lamb. From the very first I had great 

 difficulties with the men, as they believed I was taking them to 

 Nanguema, \;here they would be eaten up. They tried every 

 means in their power to throw obstacles in my way and retard 

 my movements, two of them deserting near Meketo, and the 

 others threatening to do the same. For six days I continued my 

 ■cour.e along the Lukuga, in spite of their opposition, but I was 

 then obliged to give in. It flows in a general west-north-west 

 direction to that place, and then about west into the great 

 westerly bend of the Congo, all the way tlirough a most charming 

 valley, with hills rising from 600 to 2,000 feet in height. Above 

 the lake the current is extremely rapid, and quite uimavigable 

 for boats or canoes of any description, owing to the rapids and 

 xocks. From Makahtmbi I crossed the Lukuga into Urua, and 

 struck south-west for the town of Kiyomb?, who is the chief of 

 all the Warna on the eastern side of the Congo. '^ " We reached 

 Mtowa on March 10, destitute of almost everything. To my 

 delight, however, I heard that Mr. Hore was expected every 

 day on his way by canoe to the south end of the lake. On the 

 23rd we started, crossed the lake to Kungwe, and reached 

 Karewa on the night of the 26th. As we neared the shore, we 

 were hailed by the jolly voice of Capt. Carter, whom we found 

 gun in hand and bursting with stories of his wonderful adven- 

 tures in sport and war, keeping us fixed on our seats all night 

 in his tent as he launched them forth. We went over to 

 visit the Belgian international party at their temporary quarters 

 to-day. Capt. Carter had his elephant ready to take us 'across 

 the marsh. Karema is one of the most extraordinary places for 

 a station that could be found on the lake — a wide expanse of 

 marsh, a small village, no shelter for boats, only shallow water 

 dotted with stumps of rock, no room to be got, and natives 

 hostile ; far from any line of trade. The party have commenced 

 building forts and walls, digging ditches in regular military 

 fashion. At table there sat down an Englishman, an Irishman, 

 a Scotchman, a Frenchman, a Belgian, and a German, repre- 

 senting five expeditions, and you will doubtless be pleased to 

 learn that of all these (thanks to yourself) the Scotchman, though 

 the smallest, and having to travel through entirely new country, 

 had been the most successful of all. After leaving Karema we 

 had a moderately good voyage across the lake to Jendwe, at 

 which we arrived on April 7." " Passing round the south end of 

 Tanganyika along the shore as far as the mouth of the Kilambo, 

 then striking about N.N.E. through Ulungu and Fipa, we 

 reached by easy ascents the town of Kapufi, situated in lat. S° S. 

 and long. 32" 25' E. Best of all, however, while at this place, I 

 had the honour to settle the problem of Lake Hikwa, or rather 

 Likwa, and give it some shape and place in our maps. It has 

 run itself in the hearsay accounts of successive 'travellers into 

 various protoplasmic shapes, and, will-o'-the-\\isp like, danced 

 about on the map to the tunes of various geographers. I, of 

 course, saw only a part of it, but from all I could gather it must 

 be from sixty to seventy miles in length and fifteen to twenty in 

 breadth. It lies two days east of Makapuli, in a deep depres- 

 sion of the Lambalamfipa Mountains. A large river called the 

 Mkafa, which rises in Kawendi, and which by its tributaries 

 drains the greater part of Khonongo and Fipa and all Mpimbwe, 

 falls into it. I can almost s.ay with certainty that it has no outlet, 

 certainly not any towards the west. The Kilambo rises near 

 Kapufi. I was surprised and pleased to find that my bearings 

 and estimated distances, as laid down on my sketch map every 

 two days, had actually brought me within one or two miles of 

 Tabora as laid down by Speke and Cameron. I can hardly, 

 however, call it anything but a curious coincidence." 



The colleagues of Major Serpa Pinto in the Portuguese expe- 

 dition to West Central Africa (Capt. H. Capellu and Lieut. R. 

 Iven^) were \\armly received in the Geographical Section. They 

 had thoroughly explored the elevated watersheds of Bihe. 

 Major Serpa Pinto went on his famous journey towards Mozam- 

 bique, and Messrs. Capello and Ivens struck towards the north- 

 east, nearly reaching Congo. They descended the great tributary 

 of the Congo till they reached more than 6^° S. lat., where there 

 is a great forest-belt inhabited by tribes of hostile and ferocious 

 negroes. Not far from the shores of this river there dwells one 

 of the most powerful potentates of this part of Africa, but the 

 country is very unhealthy, and the people inferior in evei-y 

 respect to the Highlanders of Bihe. The President and Sir 

 Henry Barkly and other members of the Section congratulated 

 the Portuguese on their renewed geographical enterprise, and 

 acknowledged in particular the indebtedness of geography to 

 the explorers, from one of whom (Lieut. Ivens) the Section had 

 heard an account of their travels. 



Mr. Lawrence Oliphant described the results of his recent 

 travels east of the Jordan, and particularly of his visits to 

 labyrinthine subterranean cities. The object of his visit was 

 described as that of selecting country for colonisation, and he 

 reported that there was much pasture, wooded, and arable land 

 capable of the highest degree of development. 



Mr. Butler proposed a scheme for .supplying pictorial aid to 

 geographical teaching. The travels of a Jersey gentleman, Mr. 

 W. Mesny (who was so useful to Capt. Gill in his journey across 

 China), up the Canton River, and Mr. Carl Bock's account 

 of his exploring expedition in Borneo for the Dutch-Indian 

 Government, were other subjects before this Section. 



Col. Tanner read some interesting Notes on the Dara Nur, 

 Noiihern Afghanistan, and its Inhabitants. He described the 

 inhabitants of the Dara Nur valley as differing little in appear- 

 ance from the Afghans. " Their features are softer, and they are 

 more trustworthy and less given to fanatical outbreaks than the 

 Pathans, and though they continually fight among themselves, 

 they have never given us trouble in Afghanistan. The forts of 

 the Dara Nur were similar to those of the Jellalabad plain, and 

 the interior arrangement the same. The people still retain the 

 custom of sitting on stools, and, as a rule, are not at home wdien 

 squatting on the ground. Among the Kohistanis and Kafirs 

 stools are in general use." Then followed a description of a 

 people residing in the upper part of this valley called the Chu- 

 ganis. " They live in the highest habitable parts of the Kund 

 range. East and ^^■est they are hedged in by the powerful race 

 of Safis, their hereditary enemies, and peace is seldom known 

 between them. The appearance of a Chugani is quite different 

 from that of an Afghan or a Dar Nuri. He is shorter in stature, 

 and has more pleasing features. The Chuganis are the only 

 Mohammedans I know who allow to the women perfect and un- 

 constrained freedom. Young and old, maiTied and single, they 

 go about as they do in Europe, without any of the false modesty 

 of the ordinary Indian and Afghan females. The wife of my 

 host and her daughters used to ask me every morning how I 

 fared, and became at last quite friendly. In one other place 

 only have I been allowed to converse without restraint with the 

 women, .and that was in a remote and wild part of the Brahti 

 country, where mollahs are unknown and the tenets of the 

 Prophet but imperfectly understood. The Chugani young 



lady takes a pride in her appearance The town 



of Aret is one of the most remarkable collections of houses 

 I have ever seen. It is built on the face of a very steep 

 slope, and the houses, of which there must be 600, are ranged 

 in terraces one above another. From tlie roof of one of the 

 lower ones I gazed with astonishment at a vast amphitheatre of 

 carved wood, there being in sight thousands of carved verandah 

 posts, and tens of thousands of carved panels, with which the 

 upper storeys of the houses are constructed. These panels, 

 which are arranged similarly to the shutters of Indian shops, 

 are ornamented with every conceivable variety of carved pat- 

 terns. The carving completely covered the woodwork of the 



upper storey of every house From one of the numerous 



native visitors I heard much about the Sanu Kafirs, with whom 

 the Kordar Chuganis carry on much tr.ifhc. The little-know-n 

 people whom the Afghans are pleased to call Kafirs are 

 now confined to a tract bounded on the north and north- 

 west by the Hindu-Kush, on the east by the Hindu 

 range, and on the south and south-west by the Kund 

 range, and by the Laghman. The tribes are very nume- 

 rous, and speak many different languages. The gi-eat tribe of 



