144 General Notes. [ February, 
graphy of the Congo water shed. He met with four tributaries to 
that river lying between the Kwango and the Kassai, viz., the 
Kwango, Marata, Cinlu and the Kwanger rivers. He has laid 
down the Kassai from 8° S. lat., to about 6° S. lat, but was 
stopped by king Mai, when within two days of the great water- 
falls on that stream. The Kassai is known as the Zaire from 8° 
S. as far as 4° S. Mucarouba is the native name for the lake 
heretofore called Sankowa, and it is situated in about lat. 5° S. 
A tribe of dwarfs live near it—-—The former companions of Maj. 
Serpa Pinto, Messrs. Ivens and Capello when last heard ftom 
were in the district called Duque de Braganza, unable to proceed 
further in their attempt to trace the Kwango down to its junction 
with the Congo for want of means. The Portuguese government 
has been asked to aid them. A mission station has been estab- 
lished by a French priest, Pere Duparquet, in Ovampoland, a 
tract of country south of the river Cunene, between 14° and 18° 
seven years passed in Southern Africa. Born in Bohemia in 
1847, he very early manifested great interest in natural history 
and geography and especially in African exploration. After re- 
ceiving the degree of M. D. at Prague, in 1872, he started for 
country from the Diamond fields to the Zambesi, and the Zambesi 
from its junction with the Chobe to the Barotse country. 
His map of the Zambesi is on a large scale, showing every 
island, creek and rapid. “To show the difficulties of this survey 
it may be mentioned,” says a writer in the London Times, “ that 
owing to the loss of his Nautical Almanac his sextant was useless 
and the bearings had to be taken by compass observations every 
three hundred yards, while the distances amounting in the various 
surveys to over 2,000 miles, were determined by stepping. That is 
; a 
unwell, but still full of pluck and hoping to cross the continent 
and emerge at Loanda. Then fever came on and his best canoe 
containing all his gunpowder and, worse than all, his quinine, 
sank in a rapid. He still pushed on, but at the Naverbine cata- 
ract he succumbed, and was carried back insensible by his native 
servants to lie ill during a period of sixteen months.” 
_ On arriving at Cape Town on his return, he was most warmly 
