52 The Sources of the Nile. 



of the continent, are said to form three tribes — one of them 

 inhabiting a mountainous and wooded country, and working 

 iron and copper, whose ores are found in the soil. Some 

 people of another of the tribes are said to have rudiments of a 

 tail, and the third are said to be of comparatively white colour, 

 and, although living almost under the equator, far more intel- 

 ligent and active than is usual among native Africans. M. de 

 Heuglin, travelling as we have said with the ladies Tinne, 

 believes that these reports are not without foundation. 



Although, then, one more of the main sources of the Nile is 

 certainly discovered, and this gigantic river has now been fol- 

 lowed in a north and south line from the Mediterranean to the 

 equator, although the Blue and the White branches are traced 

 to their hiding-places, and the sources of many of the other 

 tributaries must be regarded as settled, yet, in spite of all 

 this, there are still unexplained mysteries, and sufficient left 

 for future travellers to see and describe. 



The problem of the interior of Africa still, therefore, remains 

 to be solved as regards some sufficiently important details, but 

 it is gratifying to know that a few of these are in the way of 

 being settled shortly. 



The great water system of Africa is now much better under- 

 stood than it was a few years ago, and the mystery that con- 

 nected itself with African geography is being rapidly dispelled. 

 Dr. Livingstone has crossed the continent, and by following the 

 course of the Zambesi and some of its tributaries, he has pre- 

 pared us to understand a system of drainage quite different 

 from that of Europe, Asia, and America. Much that is most 

 remarkable both of vegetable and animal life in Africa, not 

 only with regard to the lower animals, but man, must be re- 

 ferred, and can be explained by a reference to this condition. 

 There is now no need to assume high mountains in the interior, 

 for Africa is a basin, vast, no doubt, in extent, but simple in its 

 plan, and the river systems are all derived from the broad ele- 

 vated rim of this basin. Within this rim, four or five hundred 

 miles wide, and varying in height from four to ten thousand feet, 

 though not without lofty exceptional peaks, there is enclosed a 

 space — the whole of Central Africa south of the equator — 

 within which are formed, and through which run large streams, 

 only able to escape at one or two points where the rim is broken. 

 Whether the Nile communicates with this network of the in- 

 terior has lately been a question. On the one hand, there were 

 the great lakes, probably, as it seemed, connected throughout 

 the east coast, and the apparent absence of any extreme dif- 

 ference of level between these and the northern river. On the 

 other hand, was the mysterious flooding of the Nile, the con- 

 stant outpouring of its waters towards the north, and the ab- 



