"SETTLING TANGANYIKA." 919 



according to Stanley's investigations, would be similarly a lacus asphaltites, 

 but that the contributions from its coasts have always surpassed the loss by 

 evaporation, and have always been steadfastly though slowly engaged in 

 brimming up the volcanic chasm. It has now at last just reached its natural 

 and long-prepared brink ; and, if these researches be accurate, the floods of 

 forthcoming years will precipitate themselves — not by a feeble trickle such as 

 Cameron thought he saw — but in a foaming burst of white and sparkling 

 wave through the Luimbi channel into the Lualaba's bed. If that be so, and 

 if, again, the Lualaba at Nyangwe is indeed the Upper Congo — which problem 

 at this very moment is under solution by our indomitable Commissioner — then 

 who can tell whether Tanganyika may not, with her opulent waves, efface or 

 diminish the Yellalas or cataracts of the ' Mother of Waters,' and perhaps so 

 create a navigable channel from Guinea to Nyangwe and the African high- 

 lands ? 



" Of such a fascinating nature are the thoughts inspired by these dis- 

 coveries, which, dull only to the narrow-minded, are to all enlightened and 

 hopeful intelligences of extreme interest and importance. Whatever the 

 judgment of accomplished geographers may prove upon the facts and con- 

 clusions embodied in the present despatch of our Commissioner, we rejoice in 

 the fair and willing tribute which he pays to his British predecessor at the 

 Lukuga. Cameron to-day receives fresh laurels from the hand of him who 

 has thus completed the task, of ' Settling Tanganyika ;' and when the public 

 has perused Mr. Stanley's second despatch, with its remarkable revelations 

 on the Nile sources, and has seen him — in fancy — start away for Nyangwe 

 from pest-stricken Ujiji, the liveliest anxiety must be felt to know what our 

 traveller will make of the other and almost the last great problem of Africa 

 — the true course and issue of Livingstone's river, the prodigious Lualaba." 



A few days after the appearance of Mr. Stanley's first letter from Ujiji, 

 the " Telegraph" published the following, also written from Ujiji, and dated 

 August 10, 1876 :— 



" Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, is reported to have said that all travellers 

 up the Nile generally returned with the statement that a new source of that 

 river had been found. The publisher of the jest, no doubt, thought that his 

 Highness was poking good fun at the discoverers. Whether it were the case 

 or not, I must inform his Highness, through the columns of ' The Daily 

 Telegraph' and 'New York Herald,' that he can pride himself upon being a 

 sovereign of a stream the several sources of which still task the best abilities 

 and qualities of explorers to discover them ; that his grand river has not one 

 but several origins ; that one main feeder was discovered by James Bruce, and 

 called the Blue Nile, that another was found by Speke and Grant, and chris- 

 tened the Victoria, and that a third was made known by Sir Samuel Baker 

 and named by him the Albert Nyanza, but that these gentlemen did 

 not exhaust the list of the sources of the Nile. Perhaps the enclosed map 



