140 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
It is more remarkable to find a similar shadow of the truth from 
a different quarter, and perhaps of an earlier date. The ancient 
inhabitants of India seem to have felt the same interest, and to 
have had an equal glimmering of the course of the Nile. In a well- 
known paper by Mr Wilford, in the Asiatic Eesearches, we have a 
sort of abstract of the ancient Indian belief concerning the Nile, 
drawn from the Puranas and other Hindu or Sanscrit books. 
The name of the river in those most ancient books is Kali, 
black. (Though Homer names the river Aegyptus^ it was known to 
ancient Gf reeks as MeXas.) According to the same authorities, that 
famous and holy river takes its rise from the lake of the gods, 
thence named Amara or Deva, Sarovera in the region of Sharma or 
Sharmasthan, between the mountains of Ajagara and Sitanta, part 
of Soma-giri, or the Mountains of the Moon, the country round 
the lake being called Chandristhan or Moon-land. The Hindus 
believed in a range of snow-covered hills in Africa. 
From thence the Kali flows into the marshes of the Padma-van, 
and through the Nishada Mountains into the land of Barbara ; 
whence it passes through the mountains of Hemacata ; then enter- 
ing the forests of Tapas (or Thebais) it runs into Kantaka-desa, or 
Mitha-sthan, and through the woods emphatically named Aranya 
and Atavi into Sanchabdhi (or our Mediterranean). 
From the country of Piishpaversha, it received the Nan da or 
Nile of Abyssinia, the Asthimati or smaller Krishna, which is the 
Takazzi or little Abay, and the Sanchanaga or Mareb. 
The Ajagara Mountains, which run parallel to the eastern shores 
of Africa, have at present the name of Lupata, or the back-bone of 
the world. Those of Sitanta are the range which lies west of the 
lake Zambre or Zaire, words not improbably corrupted from Amara 
or Sura, This Lake of the Grods is believed to be a vast reservoir 
which, through visible or hidden channels, supplies all the rivers 
of the country. 
The Hindus, for mythological purposes (says Mr Wilford), are 
fond of supposing subterranean communications between lakes and 
rivers, and the Greeks, we know, had the same leaning. 
We really had made little progress beyond these ancient guesses, 
till in the year 1858 Captains Speke and Burton saw and sailed 
upon the great lake Tanganyika, 600 miles from the coast at 
