54 General Notes. [ January, 
from the east coast of Africa to Lake Nyassa,' left England for 
Zanzibar on the 14th of November last. Nature states that his ` 
second in command, Mr. Thomson, has had an excellent train- 
` ing as a geologist, and it is expected that he will make important 
contributions to our knowledge of the geology of the region to 
be visited. 
Sir Fowell Buxton stated, at a recent meeting of the Royal 
Geographical Society, that during the last year forty miles of the 
road from Dar-es-Salaam to the north end of the Nyassa have 
been made. The natives give rio trouble and gladly use the road, 
but continue to walk in Indian file, so that the rapid growth of 
vegetation is but little impeded. One of the missionaries at 
Livingstonia, Lake Nyassa, departed, in June, 1878, on a journey 
through a portion of the country west of the lake. 
The mission sent out by the Church Missionary Society to the 
Victoria Nyanza and Uganda has not been abandoned, although 
of the four who reached the lake in 1877, one, Dr. Smith, died of 
disease, and Lieut. Smith and Mr. O’Neil were murdered. The 
Rev. C. ilson was at King Mtesa’s capital, Rubaga, in 
Uganda, when the news of the massacre of his companions 
reached him, when he crossed the lake to Speke’s Bay and made 
his way to ‘Unyanyembe. The Society, however, has at least 
fourteen agents in the field, some of whom are carpenters, me- 
chanics and agriculturists, and expect to have a chain of mission 
stations between Speke’s Bay and Zanzibar. Mr. Wilson returned 
to Uganda in January, 1878, and up to the date of his last letter 
(May 9, 1878), was living comfortably at Rubaga, where he awaits 
the arrival of three colleagues sent out by the Nile route. From 
letters quoted in the Academy we learn that he has been favorably 
impressed with the quickness and skill in imitation of the Waganda. 
In his opinion they deserve the title of “the Chinese in Africa.” 
They excel in basket making and in working in iron, copper and 
brass. They also dress skins beautifully. He also writes that 
the north-west corner of the Victoria Nyanza is thickly dotted with 
islands, some of which are fifteen miles long. The people say 
there are four hundred of them, and he has himself seen fifty or 
sixty. They are all called “Sasse” or “Sessé Islands,” which 
may be translated “Isles of the Fishermen.” These islands by 
dead reckoning extend to about S. lat. 0° 40". In the winter and 
spring of 1877 the Nyanza slowly rose until the middle of May, 
when the maximum of two feet above the ordinary level was 
reached, and it then began to recede. In January, 1878, however, 
the water was within an inch or an inch and a half of its maximum 
in the previous May. The Academy remarks that in 1878, there 
-was “a good Nile,” which was not the case in I 
The Church Missionary Society, the Academy also states, has 
decided to despatch an expedition to the south-western end of the 
eS See AMERICAN NATURALIST for November, 1878, page 763. 
