TRADITION CONCERNING NYANZA. 



211 



transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, 

 and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa. 



M. Brun-Rollet ("Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan," 

 p. 209) heard that on the west of the Padongo tribe, — 

 whom he places to the S. of Mount Kambirah, or 

 beloY/ 1° S. lat. — lies a great lake, from whose northern 

 extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In 

 the map appended to his volume this water is placed 

 between 1° S. and 3° K. lat., and about 25° 50' E. 

 long. (Greenwich), and the deversoir is made an in- 

 fluent of the White Nile. 



Bowdich (" Discoveries of the Portuguese," pp. 131 , 

 132), when speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), 

 mentions that the " negroes or the Moors of Melinde " 

 have mentioned a great water which is known to reach 

 Mombaca, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured to 

 communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis 

 Marianna, who formerly resided at Tete, recommended 

 a discovery, in a letter addressed to the government at 

 Goa, which is still preserved among the public archives 

 of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza, to 

 which there was of old a route from Mombasah with 

 the Nyassa, is apparent. 



At the southern point, where the Muingwira River 

 falls into the tortuous creek, whose surface is a little 

 archipelago of brown rocky islets crowned with trees, 

 and emerging from the blue waters, the observed lati- 

 tude of the Nyanza Lake, is 2° 24/ S. ; the longitude 

 by dead reckoning from Kazeh is E. long. 33° and 

 nearly due north, and the altitude by B. P. thermometer 

 3750 feet above sea-level. Its extent to the north is 

 unknown to the people of the southern regions, which 

 rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any 

 great extent. They informed my companion that from 



p 2 



