The gallant young naval lieutenant’s exploration of the Lukuga has not yet reached us in a satisfactory form.  He found the current sluggishly flowing at the rate of 1.2 knots per hour; he followed it for four or five miles, and he was stopped by floating grass and enormous rushes (papyri?).  A friendly chief told him that the Lukuga feeds the Lualaba which, beyond Nyangwe (Livingstone’s furthest point, in about south latitude 4deg.) takes the name of Ugarowwa.  An Arab had descended this stream fifty-five marches, and reached a place where there were ships and white merchants who traded largely in palm-oil and ivory, both rare on the Congo River.  And, unfortunately, “the name (River) Congo was also mentioned,” a term utterly unknown except to the few Portuguese-speaking natives.

At present, therefore, we must reserve judgment, and the only conclusion to which the unprofessional reader would come is that the weight of authority is in favour of a double issue for the Tanganyika, north and west.

The wilful misrepresentation is couched in these words:  “The reports obtained by Livingstone are if anything favourable to the unity of the Victoria Nyanza (Ukerewe, Ukara,) because along with it he names only such lakes as were already known to have a separate existence from it.”  As several were recognized, ergo it is one!  Dr. Livingstone heard from independent sources that the so-called Victoria Nyanza is a lake region, not a lake; his account of the Okara (Ukara), and the three or four waters run into a single huge sheet, is substantially the same as that which, after a study of the Rev. Mr. Wakefield’s Reports I offered to the Royal Geographical Society, and which I subsequently published in “Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast.”  You, Dr. Behm, are apparently satisfied with a lake drained by an inverted delta of half-a-dozen issues—­I am not.  Nor can I agree with you that “whether the Victoria Nyanza is one lake or several is a point of detail of less importance,” when it has disfigured the best maps of Africa for nearly a score of years.  The last intelligence concerning the “unity” of the lake is from Colonel C. C. Long, a staff-officer in the service of His Highness the Khedive, who was sent by Colonel Gordon on a friendly mission to King Mtesa of Uganda.  With permission to descend “Murchison Creek,” and to view “Lake Victoria Nyanza,” Colonel Long, after a march of three hours, took boat.  He sounded the waters of the lake, and found a depth of from 25 to 35 feet; in clear weather the opposite shore was visible, appearing “to an unnautical eye” from 12 to 15 miles distant; nor could this estimate be greatly wrong.  After much negotiation and opposition he obtained leave to return to Egyptian territory by water, and on the way, in north latitude 1deg. 30’, he discovered a second lake or “large basin,” at least 20 to 25 miles wide.  The geography is somewhat hazy, but the assertions are not to be mistaken.