LINGUISTIC BLUNDERS. 



207 



engaged in navigating them used sextants and kept a 

 log, precisely similar to what is found in vessels on the 

 ocean. Query, could this be in allusion to the expe- 

 dition sent by Mohammed Ali up the Nile in former 

 years?" (Proceedings of Koyal Geographical Society, 

 May 9, 1859.) Clearly, if Abdullah Bin Nasib, the 

 Msawahili alluded to, had reported these words, he 

 merely erred; the Egyptian expedition, as has been 

 shown, not only did not find, they never even heard of 

 a lake. But not being present at the conversation I am 

 tempted to assign further explanation. My companion, 

 wholly ignorant of Arabic, was reduced to depend 

 upon " Bombay," who spoke an even more debased 

 dialect than his master, and it is easy to see how the 

 blunder originated. The Arabic bahr and the Kisa- 

 wahili bahari are equally applicable in vulgar par- 

 lance to a river or sea, a lake or a river. Traditions 

 concerning a Western Sea — the to them now unknown 

 Atlantic — over which the white men voyage, are familiar 

 to many East Africans; I have heard at Harar pre- 

 cisely the same report concerning the log and sextants. 

 Either, then, Abdullah Bin Nasib confounded, or my 

 companion's " interrupter " caused him to confound 

 the Atlantic and the Lake. In the maps forwarded 

 from Kazeh by my companion, the River Kivira was, 

 after ample inquiry, made a western influent of the 

 Nyanza Lake. In the map appended to the paper in 

 Blackwood, before alluded to, it has become an effluent^ 

 and the only minute concerning so very important a 

 modification is, " This river (although I must confess at 

 first I did not think so) is the Nile itself!" 



Beyond the assertion, therefore, that no man had 

 visited the north, and the appearance of sextants and 

 logs upon the waters, there is not a shade of proof pro. 



