18709. | Geography and Travels. 407 
erns. Two of the French missionaries from Algeria have died, 
one of them by illness and the other having been killed by a lion. 
Letters down to October 17, 1878 have been received by the 
London Missionary Society from their mission at Ujiji on lake 
Tanganyika. The death from apoplexy of the leader of the 
party, Rev. Mr. Thomson, is announced. The Arabs report the 
grass in the Lukuga (Cameron’s supposed outlet: of the lake) as 
having been swept away in the last rainy season by the rising of 
the lake waters. They say it is now an out-flowing river, and one 
of them had gone down it to the Kamolondo ( ?) lake. 
We learn from the azure that a German Scientific Expedition 
under Herr C. Denhardt has recently explored the course of the 
river Dana. They only advanced about sixty miles into the in- 
terior. They could hear nothing of Mount Kinea, and it is proba- 
ble the stream does not take its rise from its slopes as hitherto 
_ supposed, 
Mr. Mackay of the English Church Missionary Society reached 
the south-eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza at Kagei in July, 
1878. aving received a conciliatory message from Lukongeh, 
chief of the Ukerewe, by whom his colleagues, Messrs. Smith and 
O'Neill were killed; he visited him. Lukongeh stated he had no 
quarrel with white men and that the death of his friends was 
caused by their interference in the affairs of an Arab. On his re- 
turn to Kagei Mr. Mackay met the Rev. Mr. Wilson, who had 
crossed over from Uganda and the two returned together to King 
Mtesa’s, after Mr. Mackay had succeeded in putting together the 
sections of a small steamer in which he transported across the 
lake the stores of machinery, tools and useful articles sent out for 
the instruction of the natives. The British Government has been 
informed of Mtesa’s intention to send an embassy to the Queén. 
He is anxious to open up a direct road from the Nyanza to the 
coast through the Masai country. He is ready to welcome Eng- 
lishmen, but desires no more dealings with the Arabs, and is very 
much afraid of the Egyptians. Rumanika, the old King of Kara- 
gwe is dead, and Mtesa has dispatched an army to secure the 
throne for one of the deceased king’s sons. - : 
The Missionaries sent out by the Society by the Nile route ar- 
rived at Regiaf above Gondokoro about November 7 
At a conference of telegraph engineers and others held at the 
Royal Geographical Society’s rooms in London, on the 6th of 
January, last, a report was adopted recommending a route for an 
overland telegraph from Khartum to Pretoria. The following are 
the sections and distances on this route: | 
Geographical Miles. 
- 645 
I, Khartum to Gondokoro 
2. Gondokovo to Mtesa’s capital ..... 300 
3: tesa’s to south side of Lake Victoria eeesees 300 
4. Lake Victoria to Unyanyembe Elites (430 
5. Unyanyembe to Bagomoayo ehi ET s: 370 
