296 
TRAVELS m CENTRAL AFRICA 
level was two feet below its apparent height. When flooded in 
the rainy season^ and allowing for even no additional rate of eurrent^ 
the volume of water at that period may he modestly assumed at 
two thousand five hundred eubic feet per second. 
The inference from this great falling-off in the volume of water 
appears to me that the Ayi_, like_, in my opinion_, the Nile and all 
African waters^ owe their entire supply of water direct from the 
drainage of the rain-fall^, and it must consequently follow that the 
water-shed between it and the lakes cannot be much more than one 
hundred miles distant. 
The nature of the country traversed south by Mussaad is hilly 
and mountainous up to his farthest pointy where he learnt_, at a 
distance of about forty miles soutlq the existence of the lake that, 
two years afterwards, was visited and named by Sir Samuel Baker 
the Albert Nyanza. 
‘^‘^The sister stream of the Ayi (the Yalo), about thirty miles to 
the west, I had observed to flow into the Nile at Aliab, and had 
subsequently caught views of it at Jirri and Dugwarra. The dis- 
charge of water by it, if not more, cannot be less than that of the 
Ayi, and its head — as also that of the Djour, still farther west, and 
flowing into the Bahar il Gazal — must also be confined to the 
southern highlands. 
^^Tn my communications to the Boyal Geographical Society and 
British Association in 1860, I signified the existence of a large 
sheet of water, reported to flow west, and existing, according to 
what I could glean, ten days^ journey farther south than my last 
point amongst the Neam Neam at Mundo in 1858. 
The water-shed, then, in these, by Mussaad, beautifully described 
highlands, abounding in its valleys with plantains and date-palms, 
must in form represent something like the letter T, with the base 
