" THE RIDDLE OF TANGANYIKA." 917 



a discovery effected in the hitherto unknown land south of the Nyanzas, 

 which even so illustrious a lady may be proud to accept. In that subsequent 

 communication he mentions some extraordinary particulars connected with 

 the coasts of Lake Tanganyika ; its copper mines, underground dwellings, 

 strange tribes, wild and magnificent scenery, abundant fishes and aquatic crea- 

 tures, including some novel amphibia, which he calls ' water hysenas.' Even 

 in the present despatch every line and word tends to increase our interest in 

 this glorious African Michigan, which, rolling its bright waves for five whole 

 degrees of latitude, seems destined, according to the discoveries of Stanley, 

 to a yet more important function in African geography than it has yet ful- 

 filled. 



" We say this, because the absorbing portion of the letter which we 

 print this morning is incontestably that dealing with the Lukuga, declared 

 by Captain Cameron to be the outlet of the lake. No geographer needs to 

 be reminded of the announcement made by this explorer's letter of May, 

 1874, to the effect that the Tanganyika discharged at this point into the 

 Lualaba. The difficulty of believing the theory was prodigious, in the first 

 place because of the very slight flow reported, and the consequent insufficient 

 relief of so immense a lake receiving a hundred mountain streams and two or 

 three considerable rivers ; moreover, the Tanganyika is full of reed-choked 

 inlets or tingi-tingi like the Lukuga — which Cameron had merely entered and 

 not explored — and, lastly, with all these uncomfortable doubts existing, there 

 remained a full third of the lake-coast yet to be searched for a more compre- 

 hensible outlet. Such considerations threw a cold shadow upon the belief 

 which Captain Cameron proclaimed ; and we ourselves, while yielding to 

 none in admiration of that explorer's labours, could not but point out how 

 unsatisfactory the statements appeared. 



" With all the more gratification, we now find ourselves the means of 

 conveying Mr. Stanley's generous recognition that, in lighting upon the 

 Lukuga, Cameron really made a greater discovery than he knew of; for, while 

 to find an existing outlet is much, to hit upon one which is not an outlet yet, 

 but will be in a short time, must seem still more lucky and clever. Our 

 Commissioner warmly hails his predecessor on this spot as the decipherer of 

 the riddle of Tanganyika, but in a sense never imagined. According to Mr. 

 Stanley, there was until lately a ' Lukuga' river, which ran with a feeble vo- 

 lume from the Uguha hills into the lake. This river brought down clay and 

 slit, which, meeting the debris washed in from the lake, piled up a Mitwansi, 

 or barrier of dry land, covered with trees, and admitting a slight soak of 

 water when the south-west wind blew, causing a current. Behind the Mit- 

 wansi, on the other side of the narrow water-shed, a real stream, the Luindi 

 or Luimbi, ran to the westward. 



If our Commissioner's view is correct, that neck of land was never 



