TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 791 



our plaudits and cur congratulations. Mr. Thomson was commissioned to explore 

 the unknown country about Mount Kilima-njaro and Mount Kenia, and if possible 

 to continue his route to Lake Kyanza. He has done all this and much more. 

 After an unsuccessful start from Zanzibar in March of last year, in which, how- 

 ever, he reached Kilima-njaro and ascended it about 9,000 ft., he returned to the 

 coast from Taveta, and started again in July, this time from Mombasa. We are 

 not yet fully acquainted with his route, but we know that he again reached the 

 great mountain, reputed to have an elevation of more than 20,000 ft., that 

 thence he reached the east side of Lake Nyanza, that he is the first who has stood 

 on the shores of L. Baringo. That thence, always among natives who 

 had never before seen a white man, he reached Mount Kenia, reputed to be 

 18,000 ft. high, and found his way back to the coast without any conflict or loss 

 of life by violence, and this after a journey of about 500 miles, nearly the whole 

 of it through a country previously unknown to geography. I have been favoured 

 by him with a short communication, which will be read presently. The courage 

 and the temper, the decision and the tact required for successful progress among the 

 warlike aud rapacious tribes whose territories he passed through, are qualities which 

 demand our genuine admiration. Take a single trait : ' As an illustration of their 

 readiness to draw their swords, I may mention,' he says, ' my own case, in which a 

 Masai actually drew his cime to settle matters with me, because, getting tired of his 

 extreme curiosity to see the whiteness of my leg, I pushed him away. On his drawing 

 his cime I laughed and pretended I wanted to see it, and so the matter ended.' 



Before Mr. Thomson had actually returned to Zanzibar, another explorer, 

 under the direction of a Committee of this Association, had started in the same 

 direction. Mr. H. H. Johnston, whose plans, however, are devoted primarily to 

 the investigation of the fauna and flora of Kilima-njaro, left the British Residency, 

 Zanzibar, in May last for Mombasa, having bj the advice of Sir John Kirk 

 ^elected that route for Kilima-njaro. Mr. Johnston had succeeded with Sir John 

 Kirk's kind assistance in getting together a well-organised party both of collectors 

 and porters, and started in good health, with every hope of ultimate success. 

 Further details on this subject will perhaps be given in the report of the Kilima- 

 njaro Committee to be read in Section D, and we have a communication from Sir 

 John Kirk, dated July 10, to be read presently, which shows that he has reached 

 his ground. 



8. To the great desire of the French to unite their possessions in Northern and 

 ' 'entral Africa, and to command the commerce of the native states south of the 

 Sahara, we owe many important expeditions, one of which terminated unfortunately 

 in the destruction of Colonel Flatters, together with several other officers and men, 

 by the Tuaregs in February 1881. Nevertheless continued progress has been made 

 in the completion of our maps of that region. Colonel Flatters found everywhere 

 evidences that at some remote period the great Wadi Igharghar was the bed of a 

 river flowing into one of the most westerly of the Tunisian depressions, that large 

 tracts were once fertilised by it, of which small and scattered oases alone have 

 survived to our epoch, and that subterranean water probably exists along its course. 

 The hand of man, which is about to admit the waters of the Mediterranean into 

 those depressions, may yet work surprising changes in these arid regions. We 

 have evidence of the improvements possible, in the description given by Mr. Oscar 

 Lenz, of the young Arab city of Tenduf on the skirts of the desert (cir. 27° N.). 

 Founded only thirty years ago, in the heart of Islam, he describes it as now con- 

 sisting of large well-built houses surrounded with well-watered gardens of vegetables, 

 and groves of date palms, a centre for caravan routes in four directions. This 

 traveller, who visited Timbuktu in 1880, describes it as a decayed city of very 

 little commercial importance, as may be imagined from their currency of cowries 

 at_ the rate of 900 for a franc; and greatly in want of a little more intercourse 

 with the world. The people, indeed, imagine their river, the Niger, to be identical 

 with the Nile. The project of a railway thither from Algeria, actually marked on 

 some maps, he dismisses as a chimera ; the idea, however, has not been abandoned. 

 The line now proposed is from Wargla by Insalah and Inzize to Timbuktu. 



I am tempted here to remark that French travellers have made one observation, 



