138 REPORT—1863. 
treaty with the King of Burmah. The author stated that the large consumption 
and continual exhaustion of coal in England and America had induced him to 
bring before them the coal-supply of India, which at the present juncture was a 
uestion of vital importance as to the financial position of our railways there—Sir 
harles Wood having recently guaranteed the East Indian Auxiliary Railway for 
the provision of cheap coal from the Kurhurballee fields south of the Ganges, 
while the;working of the Assam coal-fields is a matter of greater moment, as it 
would facilitate the project of overland communication between Western China 
and British India, and not only extend trade, but induce emigration to eastern 
Bengal and British Burmah, which provinces have an area of nearly 200,000 
square miles, and a population less than 4,000,000. The Oriental Inland Com- 
pany, after spending a large portion of their capital in trials, now admitted that 
the train-system was a failure. The author had persevered in experiments to 
render his system a perfect one, and some recent improvements in boilers and 
condensers would enable him to establish a cheap mode of transit by tug- and tow- 
boats of native type. The paper was accompanied by appendices and diagrams ex- 
planatory of the nautilus-flotilla system of boats advocated by the author; and it 
stated that by their adoption Assam coal could be brought to Kooshtee at two- 
thirds of the present price of that brought from Calcutta, and at one-fourth of 
its cost in the upper part of the Burhampooter. 
On his Exploration of certain Affluents of the Nile. By Baron von Hevetin. 
On some Old Maps of Africa, placing the Central Equatorial Lakes (especially 
Nyanza and Tanganyika) nearly in their true positions. By Joun Hoge, 
M.A., F.RS., F.R.GS., Se. 
The author described in this paper some old maps of Africa, in each of which 
one of the central lakes of Equatorial Africa is laid down nearly in its exact position. 
The first of the’ maps mentioned is one of the 16th century, which is preserved, 
according to Sir R. I. Murchison, in the College de Propaganda Fide at Rome. In 
it the Nile is delineated as flowing out of an equatorial lake; and it was probably 
in part derived from that by Diafar Ben Musa in A.D. 839. 
In this Arabic map the Nile is laid down as issuing from a lake upon the equator, 
named Kura Kavar. 
The next map is that of Africa, by John Senex, F.R.S., Geographer to Queen 
Anne, and which he dedicated to “Sir Isaac Newton, Kt., President of the Royal 
Society, and Master of Her Majesty’s Mint,” about 150 years ago. 
In it is placed, in about. 1° ofl latitude from the equator, southwards, a large lake 
of much the same form as the Lake Nyanza, and extending to near 3° south lat. 
The 35th meridian of east longitude intersects about one-third of its west por- 
tion, instead of diyiding it at about one-third of its east side. Senex says, “ This 
great lake is placed there by the report of the negroes.’’ But the same able car- 
tographer has placed, in his ‘Map of the World,’ the “great lake (Nyanza), b 
report of the Caffres,” nearer to the equator, and in about 33° east long., whic 
is a much more accurate position than that given in his former map. 
The fifth map of Africa is a small one, published in 1811, by Walker, in his 
‘Universal Atlas.’ This, omitting the former equatorial lake, or the Nyanza, ex- 
hibits a very long and narrow lake, called “ Lake of Zambre.” It presents, upon the 
whole, much of the shape of the Lake Tanganyika, its north extremity being placed 
at about 3° of south lat., and its east position in the meridian of 31° (or nearly so) 
of east long. It will be seen that Walker has only misplaced the Lake Zambre, 
or Tanganyika, by one degree of longitude—a singular coincidence, when we re- 
member the date of its execution, more than fifty years since. 
Another lake, the Maravi, or Nyassa, called by some Zambesi, is given in a sixth 
map, also exhibited, which is by Titers at Edinburgh, in 1815; but with remark- 
able carelessness, or probably scepticism, it omits altogether the ¢wo former great 
equatorial lakes. 
Hence, inasmuch as each of these three maps only places a single and a different 
