SIR RODERICK MURCHISON. 



61 



Amongst minor explorations, I may mention 

 that of Mr Henry C. Arcangelo, who in 1847 

 ascended the Jnba or Govind River. It is, 

 however, doubtful how far his explorations ex- 

 tended. He was followed in 1849 by Captain 

 Short. In November, 1851, a party of three 

 Moors or Zanzibar Arabs landed at 6 Bocamoio ' 

 (the Bagamoyo roadstead village where M. 

 Maizan disembarked), travelled with 40 carriers 

 to the Lake 'Tanganna' (Tanganyika), crossed 

 it in a boat which they built, visited the Muata 

 Cazembe, and reached, after six months, the Por- 

 tuguese Benguela. The late Mr Consul Brand 

 communicated, through the Foreign Office, this 

 remarkable journey, in which Africa had been 

 crossed, with few difficulties, from sea to sea, 

 and it excited the attention of the Roval Geo- 

 graphical Society (Journal, vol. xxiv. of 1854). 



In 1852 Sir Roderick I. Murchison pro- 

 pounded his theory of the basin-shaped struc- 

 ture of the African interior. This was an 

 important advance upon the great plateau of 

 Lacepede (Memoire, etc., dans les Annales du 

 Musee de l'Histoire IS T at., vi. 284), and it abol- 

 ished the gardens and terraces of Bitter (Erd- 

 kunde, le Plateau ou la Haute Afrique). About 

 the same time Col. Sykes recommended that an 



