684 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



sea may now be definitely taken at about three thousand eight hundred feet, 

 and the depth was ascertained by Mr. Stanley at a point near the eastern 

 shore to be two hundred and seventy-five feet. 



" Mr Stanley sent three letters to England — two via Zanzibar, and one 

 by the hand of M. Linant de Bellefonds, who was afterwards killed by the 

 Baris near Gondokoro ; but we are still without his description of the south- 

 western shores of the lake — between the Kitangule River and Jordan's Nul- 

 lah of Speke — which he proposed to examine on a second excursion from his 

 camp at Kagehyi, to which he had returned from M'tesa's capital. With re- 

 gard to Mr. Stanley's subsequent movements, we are entirely in the dark. It 

 may be assumed from some of his letters that his first object, after complet- 

 ing his survey of the Victoria Nyanza, would be to cross over to the other 

 great Nile reservoir, named by Baker the Albert Nyanza, where an equally 

 large extent of virgin territory awaited his exploration ; but it is also to be 

 inferred from the important statement with which his last letter of May 15, 

 concludes, of his being about to enter on a tramp of three thousand miles, 

 that he must contemplate the further prodigious feat of striking south-west 

 from the Nile basin and opening a way to the western sea-coast between the 

 lines of the Congo and Ogowe. 



" In the case of any ordinary traveller, to attempt a march of such extra- 

 ordinary difficulty through an entirely unknown country, and without any 

 previous arrangement for relief and support, would be pronounced to be 

 an act of almost culpable temerity, but Mr. Stanley possesses such very ex- 

 ceptional qualifications in his fertility of resource, his vigour both of mind 

 and body, and the unlimited command of funds which he derives from his 

 munificent patrons in London and New York, that his success hardly seems 

 beyond the reach of reasonable expectation. At any rate, as a twelvemonth 

 has now elapsed since Mr. Stanley quitted the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, 

 intelligence must very shortly reach us, either through Colonel Gordon or by 

 Zanzibar, of the further course of his African travels ; and his friends may 

 rest assured that, if success should attend his steps, nowhere will that success 

 be hailed with greater satisfaction than in this country and in this Society, 

 where his discovery and relief of Livingstone are still remembered with min- 

 gled feelings of admiration and gratitude." 



Reverting to Lieutenant Cameron's journey across Central Africa — of 

 which he gave a graphic sketch — Sir Henry observed that probably the most 

 useful information brought by Lieutenant Cameron refers to the slave trade 

 of the interior of the continent, the inference to be drawn from his experience 

 being, that until superior inducements for the employment of capital are held 

 out by the introduction of legitimate commerce, it will be in vain to expect 

 that this odious traffic can be suppressed, or even seriously checked, by mere 

 repressive measures on the sea-board. The geographical result of his jour- 



