The Nile Basin (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1864. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... saline substances washed down by tributaries from the area of drainage. The Journal of the Boyal Geographical Society (vol. xxx., 1860) lost no time in offering a solution of the "strange hydrological puzzle." Earl de Grey and Bipon's address thus enters upon the question: --" The configuration of the country to the northward (of the Tanganyika) gives us excellent reason to believe that the northern tributary is correctly described; but whether the river mentioned as entering the lake at the south does not really run out of it, is a fair matter for discussion."0 The visits of Dr. Livingstone to the Shirwa and Nyassa Lakes, then not thoroughly explored--the circumstance that the three waters, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and Shirwa, were approximately at the same level f--and the possibility that the Tanganyika might be the highest of them all, afforded a satis The theory is usually attributed to Mr. Francis Galton, F.R.G.S.; and as long as Captain Speke's "Lunse Montes," as he loved to call them, were allowed to blockade the north of Tanganyika, it was exceedingly plausible. f Captain Speke had placed the Tanganyika at 1844 feet above the sea. Dr. Livingstone gave 2000 feet of altitude to the Shirwa; difference, 156 feet. factory hypothetical solution. The connection, with or without small intermediate waters, between the Tanganyika and the Nyassa, would account for the surplus waters of the former, and for the non-variation of height in the splendid Shire' River which drains the latter. On the other hand, Captain Speke, shortly after our return, published, much against my wish, two papers in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, September and October, 1859. They were accompanied by a sketch-map, in which, to my astonishment, appeared, for the first time in print, a huge range...