TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 529 
the study of British itineraries he drew attention to the early Freuch publica- 
tions of this character, which go back at least to as early as the end of the 
fifteenth century, and of which traces are associated with the religious pilgrimages 
of the early medieval period, and particularly to the series of ‘Guides’ pub- 
lished in Paris by Charles Estienne from 1552 onwards. He reviewed the periods 
and classification in point of time to which the growth and character of road- 
book literature can be attributed, and indicated its relation to the historical 
development of cartographic science, and of exact measurement of surface and 
distance. 
This introduction was followed by a list of publications which can be classed 
as itineraries or road-books, and which appeared in the United Kingdom : (i) Be- 
tween 1577 and 1675; (ii) between 1675 and 1798; and (iii) from 1798 to about 
1850. The first of these periods has its origin in the travels through England of 
John Leland (1535-1543), and commences with the itineraries of Holinshed 
and Harrison (1577), and of William Smith (1588), and the ‘Guide des Chemins 
d’Angleterre,’ published by Jean Bernard, in Paris, in 1579, and is, later, illus- 
trated by a series of books founded on John Norden’s Tables of Distances (1625), 
measured by the old British mile, which was in use until the roads were perambu- 
lated by John Ogilby in the reign of Charles II. The second period of classifica- 
tion dates from the publication of Ogilby’s ‘ Britannia’ in 1675—a work which 
embodies in a hundred folio sheets of road-maps the results of Ogilby’s exact 
measurement of the principal roads of England and Wales. From that date 
until the end of the next century a large number of road-books is recorded, 
including a certain number published in Scotland and Ireland, founded both in 
form and details on the work of Ogilby. From 1798, the date of publication 
of Cary’s ‘New Itinerary,’ which was based on John Cary’s measurements 
extending over ten thousand miles of roads in England and Wales, road-books 
and itineraries became more exact and more complete and artistic, illustrating 
a third and last period of their development. 
The author referred, finally, to a few representative French road-books and 
maps of the roads of France which threw light on the general subject. 
2. From the Victoria Nyanza to the Kisii Highlands. 
By Feurx Oswaup, D.Sc., B.A., F.G.S. 
From Kisumu the author sailed round the vast basaltic mass of Gwasi to 
Karungu on the east coast of the Victoria Nyanza. The hundred-fathom 
line lies so close to this coast that the considerable depth of the lake here is 
‘probably due to a north-south zone of dislocation. For six weeks last winter he 
camped six miles south of Karungu, investigating some Lower Miocene deposits 
and collecting vertebrate fossils, &c., for the British Museum. The country 
consists of high grassy downs of a dissected basalt plateau, with scattered trees 
of candelabra euphorbias and spiny mimosas. It is separated by the broad 
alluvial plain of the Kuja River from the rugged granite heights of the Anglo- 
German frontier. Here the lecturer observed at close quarters the primitive 
habits and customs of the naked Kavirondo negroes, a Nilotic race of fine 
physique and high morality. Thence he marched eastwards up the Kuja basin, 
mapping the topography and geology of hitherto unsurveyed country, through 
districts decimated by sleeping-sickness, with a consequent reversion to a state 
of nature. Crossing the granite range of Gongogongo (the haunt of lions and 
hyenas) and the gneissic peneplain of Sakwa, he entered the Kisii highlands by 
the Kuja gorge at Vinyo. This quartzite plateau (6,000-7,000 feet high) 
breaks off by steep escarpments to the north-west and south-west facing the 
platform of gneiss and schists (with auriferous quartz) at their foot. A vast 
intrusion of dolerite occurs between the quartzite and the underlying schists, 
and yields a very fertile soil in the Kuja valley and especially near the base of 
the escarpments; here consequently are situated the chief settlements of the 
Kisii negroes, a Bantu-speaking race, differing greatly from the Kavirondo. The 
country has been practically deforested by their wasteful custom of clearing the 
ground for their crops by fire. 
Kisii Boma, near the head of the Riana, is the administrative centre (trans- 
MM 
