September 5, 1884.] 



SCIENCE, 



213 



ported existence of a dwarfish race on the upper 

 waters of the Sankuru. 



Proceeding southward to the region of Portuguese 

 exploration, Messrs. Britto, Capello, and Ivens, who 

 reached the Upper Quango in 1878, returned last 

 January to Loando, with the intention, it is said, of 

 descending one of its great tributaries. They are now 

 on the Kumene. Dr. Pogge compares the climate of 

 Mussumba on the 8th parallel, in the month of De- 

 cember, to that of North Germany; and the fact illus- 

 trates, what we learn from so many other quarters, 

 that much of the interior of Africa belongs, by reason 

 of its elevation above the sea, to a far more temperate 

 zone, and is better suited to the European constitu- 

 tion, than its geographical position promises. The 

 terrible prevalence of fever, which has cost so many 

 lives, will probably be mitigated in time, and by im- 

 proved accommodation. The hills are comparatively 

 free from it. The progress already made in the white 

 occupation of Central Africa was well shown by a table 

 of actual centres of trade, or missionary institutions 

 (a hundred and twenty in number), now established 

 there. 1 



He then took up the Russian project for diverting 

 the Oxus, or Amu Darya, from the Sea of Aral to the 

 Caspian ; the level of which, according to Mr. George 

 Kennan, a recent American traveller, is steadily but 

 slowly falling, notwithstanding the enormous quantity 

 of water poured in by the Yolga, the Ural, and other 

 rivers. In fact, Col. Yinukof says, that the Caspian 

 is drying up fast, and that the fresh-water seals, 

 which form so curious a feature of its fauna, are fast 

 diminishing in number. At first view, there would 

 not appear great difficulty in restoring water com- 

 munication, the point where the river would be di- 

 verted being about two hundred and sixteen feet 

 above the Caspian; but accurate levelling has shown 

 considerable depressions in the intervening tract. 

 Certainly the Oxus, or a branch of it, once flowed 

 into the Caspian Sea. Prof. R. Lentz, of the Russian 

 Academic imperiale des sciences, sums up his investi- 

 gation of ancient authorities by affirming that there 

 is no satisfactory evidence of its ever having done 

 so before the year 1320. Passages which have been 

 quoted from Arab writers of the ninth century, only 

 prove, in his opinion, that they did not discriminate 

 between the Caspian Sea and the Sea of Aral. There 

 is evidence that in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 

 turies the river bifurcated, and one branch found its 

 way to the Caspian, but probably ceased to do so in 

 the sixteenth century. This agrees with Turkoman 

 traditions. We may safely conclude that the thing 

 will not be done ; nor is it at all probable that Russian 

 finances will permit the alternative proposal of cut- 

 ting a purely artificial canal by the shortest line, at an 

 estimated expense of from fifteen to twenty million 

 roubles. 



One of the finest feats of mountaineering on record 

 was performed last year by Mr. W. W. Graham, who 

 reached an elevation of twenty-three thousand five 

 hundred feet in the Himalayas about twenty-nine hun- 



1 A list of these is given in an appendix to the address, with 

 their geographical positions collated with great care. 



; feet above the summit of Chimborazo, whose 

 ascent by Mr. Whymper, in 1880, marked an epoch 

 in these exploits. Mr. Graham was accompanied 

 by an officer of the Swiss army, an experienced 

 mountaineer, and by a professional Swiss guide. 

 They ascended Kabru, a mountain visible from Dar- 

 jeeling, lying to the west of Kanchinjunga, whose 

 summit still defies the strength of man. 



The primary tri angulation of India, commenced in 

 the year 1800, is practically complete. Much second- 

 ary triangulation remains to be executed, but chiefly 

 outside the limits of India proper. The Pisgah 

 views, by which some of the loftiest mountains in 

 the world have been fixed in position, sometimes 

 from points in the nearest Himalayas, a hundred 

 and twenty miles distant, only serve to arouse a 

 warmer desire for unrestrained access. The belief, 

 long entertained, that a summit loftier than Mount 

 Everest exists in Thibet, is by no means extinct; but 

 it is possible that the snowy peak intended may prove 

 eventually to be the Mount Everest itself of the 

 original survey. 



The Upper Oxus has now been traced from its 

 sources in the Panjah, chiefly by native explorers; 

 and to them we may be said to be indebted for all 

 we know of Nepaul, from which Europeans are as 

 jealously excluded as they are from the wildest 

 central Asian kanate, although Nepaul is not so far 

 from Calcutta as Kingston is from Quebec. 



The Australian continent has been crossed again 

 from east to west by Mr. Mills, who started with thirty 

 camels attended by five Afghan drivers. Six of them 

 died from the effects, as was supposed, of eating 

 poisonous herbage. Mr. Mills did not deviate much 

 from the tracks of the late Mr. W. C. Gosse and of 

 Mr. J. Forrest: his journey has therefore added little 

 to previous geographical knowledge ; but it has helped 

 to make the route better known, and afforded fresh 

 evidence that the value of the camel in those terrible 

 Australian saharas is in no degree less than it is where 

 he has long been known as the ' ship of the desert.' 

 Another traveller, Mr. C. Winnecke, starting from the 

 Cowarie station on the Warburton River, in 28° south, 

 has traversed about four hundred miles of new coun- 

 try in a northerly direction, and made a sketch-map 

 of forty thousand square miles, up to Goyders Pillars, 

 — a remarkable natural feature in the Tarleton Range. 

 He, too, owed his success to the employment of 

 camels. The international circumpolar expeditions 

 have added, perhaps, to local knowledge, especially 

 as regards the climate and means of supporting life 

 at various stations, but not much, so far as reported, 

 to geography generally. To this remark, however, 

 a brilliant exception must be made. The distinction 

 of the nearest approach to the north pole, yet made 

 by man, has been won by the late Lieut. Lockwood 

 and Sergt. Brainerd, of Lieut. Greely's expedition. 

 They reached on May 13, 1882, an island not before 

 known, in latitude 83° 24 north, longitude 44° 5' west, 

 now named after its "discoverer. This is four or five 

 miles beyond Capt. Markham's farthest point (83° 20' 

 north), and it appears to be by no means the only 

 geographical achievement which in some measure 



