of a turkey, a case of wine, and cigars, said he was only sorry for his own sake that we had found a fellow-countryman, else he would have had the envied honor of claiming us as his guests, and had the pleasure of transporting us in his vessels down to Khartum.

The Rev. Mr. Moorlan, and two other priests of the Austrian Mission, were here on a visit from their station at Kich, to see the old place again before they left for Khartum; for the Aus trian government, discouraged by the failure of so many years, had ordered the recall of the whole of the establishment for these regions. It was no wonder these men were recalled; for, out of twenty missionaries who, during the last thirteen years, had ascended the White River for the purpose of propagating the Gospel, thirteen had died of fever, two of dysentery, and two had retired broken in health, yet not one convert had been made by them.

The fact is, there was no government to control the population or to protect property; boys came to them, looked at their pictures, and even showed a disposition to be instructed, but there it ended; they had no heart to study when no visible returns were to be gained. One day the people would examine the books, at another throw them aside, say their stomachs were empty, and run away to look for food. The Bari people at Gondokoro were described as being more tractable than those of Kich, being of a braver and more noble nature; but they were all half starvednot because the country was too poor to produce, but because they were too lazy to cultivate. What little corn they grew they consumed before it was fully ripe, and then either sought for fish in the river or fed on tortoises in the interior, as they feared they might never reap what they sowed.

The missionaries never had occasion to complain of these blacks, and to this day they would doubtless have been kindly inclined toward Europeans, had the White Nile traders not brought the devil among them. Mr. Moorlan remembers the time when they brought food for sale; but now, instead, they turn their backs upon all foreigners, and even abuse the missionaries for having been the precursors of such dire calamities. The shell of the brick church at Gondokoro, and the cross on the top of a nativebuilt hut in Kich, are all that will remain to bear testimony of these Christian exertions to improve the condition of these heathens. Want of employment, I heard, was the chief operative

cause in killing the poor missionaries; for, with no other resource left them to kill time, they spent their days eating, drinking, smoking, and sleeping, till they broke down their constitutions by living too fast.

Mr. Moorlan became very friendly, and said he was sorry he could not do more for us. His head-quarters were at Kich, some way down the river, where, as we passed, he hoped at least he might be able to show us as much attention and hospitality as lay in his power. Musquitoes were said to be extremely troublesome on the river, and my men begged for some clothes, as Petherick, they said, had a store for me under the charge of his vakil. The store-keeper was then called, and confirming the story of my men, I begged him to give me what was my own. It then turned out that it was all Petherick's, but he had orders to give me on account any thing that I wanted. This being settled, I took ninetyfive yards of the commonest stuff as a makeshift for musquitocurtains for my men, besides four sailor's shirts for my head men.

On the 18th, Kurshid Agha was summoned by the constant fire of musketry a mile or two down the river, and went off in his vessels to the relief. A party of his had come across from the N'yambara country with ivory, and on the banks of the Nile, a few miles north of this, were engaged fighting with the natives. He arrived just in time to settle the difficulty, and next day came back again, having shot some of the enemy and captured their cows. Petherick, we heard, was in a difficulty of the same kind, upon which I proposed to go down with Baker and Grant to suc cor him; but he arrived in time, in company with his wife and Dr. James Murie, to save us the trouble, and told me he had brought a number of men with him, carrying ivory, for the purpose now of looking after me on the east bank of the Nile, by following its course up to the south, though he had given up all hope of seeing me, as a report had reached him of the desertion of my porters at Ugogo. He then offered me his dyabir, as well as any thing else that I wanted that lay within his power to give. Suffice it to say, I had, through Baker's generosity, at that very moment enough and to spare; but, at his urgent request, I took a few more yards of cloth for my men, and some cooking fat; and, though I offered to pay for it, he declined to accept any return at my hands.

Though I naturally felt much annoyed at Petherick-for I had hurried away from Uganda, and separated from Grant at Kari

M M

solely to keep faith with him-I did not wish to break friendship, but dined and conversed with him, when it transpired that his vakil, or agent, who went south from the N'yambara station, came among the N'yam N'yams, and heard from them that a large river, four days' journey more to the southward, was flowing from east to west, beyond which lived a tribe of " women," who, when they wanted to marry, mingled with them in the stream and returned; and then, again, beyond this tribe of women there lived another tribe of women and dogs. Now this may all seem a very strange story to those who do not know the negro's and Arab's modes of expression, but to me it at once came very natural, and, according to my view, could be interpreted thus: The river, running from east to west, according to the native mode of expressing direction, could be nothing but the Little Luta Nzigé running the opposite way, according to fact and our mode of expression. The first tribe of women were doubtless the Wanyoro, called women by the naked tribes on this side because they wear bark coveringsan effeminate appendage, in the naked man's estimation; and the second tribe must have been in allusion to the dog-keeping Waganda, who also would be considered women, as they wear bark clothes. In my turn, I told Petherick he had missed a good thing by not going up the river to look for me; for, had he done so, he would not only have had the best ivory-grounds to work upon, but, by building a vessel in Madi above the cataracts, he would have had, in my belief, some hundred miles of navigable water to

transport his merchandise. In short, his succoring petition was most admirably framed, had he stuck to it, for the welfare of both of us.*

We now received our first letters from home, and in one from Sir Roderick Murchison I found the Royal Geographical Society had awarded me their "founder's medal" for the discovery of the Victoria N'yanza in 1858.

*See Petherick's succoring petition, addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Ashburton, President of the Royal Geographical Society, in the Proceedings of that Society, dated the 19th of June, 1860.

CONCLUSION.

My journey down to Alexandria was not without adventure, and carried me through scenes which, in other circumstances, it might have been worth while to describe. Thinking, however, that I have already sufficiently trespassed on the patience of the reader, I am unwilling to overload my volume with any matter that does not directly relate to the solution of the great problem which I went to solve. Having now, then, after a period of twenty-eight months, come upon the tracks of European travelers, and met them face to face, I close my Journal, to conclude with a few explanations, for the purpose of comparing the various branches of the Nile with its affluents, so as to show their respective values.

The first affluent, the Bahr el Ghazal, took us by surprise; for, instead of finding a huge lake, as described in our maps, at an elbow of the Nile, we found only a small piece of water resem. bling a duck-pond buried in a sea of rushes. The old Nile swept through it with majestic grace, and carried us next to the Geraffe branch of the Sobat River, the second affluent, which we found flowing into the Nile with a graceful semicircular sweep and good stiff current, apparently deep, but not more than fifty yards broad. Next in order came the main stream of the Sobat, flowing into the Nile in the same graceful way as the Geraffe, which in breadth it surpassed, but in velocity of current was inferior. The Nile by these additions was greatly increased; still, it did not assume that noble appearance which astonished us, so much, immediately after the rainy season, when we were navigating it in canoes in Unyoro.

I here took my last lunar observations, and made its mouth N. lat. 9° 20′ 48′′, E. long. 31° 24' 0". The Sobat has a third mouth farther down the Nile, which unfortunately was passed without my knowing it; but as it is so well known to be unimportant, the loss was not great.

Next to be treated of is the famous Blue Nile, which we found a miserable river, even when compared with the Geraffe branch of the Sobat. It is very broad at the mouth, it is true, but so shallow that our vessel with difficulty was able to come up it. It had all the appearance of a mountain stream, subject to great pe