Note 6 — CHAP. XV. THE TANGANYIKA LAKE AND ITS PERIPLUS.

Mr. Cooley’s ‘Memoir on the Geography of N’yassi,’ p. 1. (Vol. XV. of 1845, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.) The extracts from Portuguese history in the text are entirely taken from that learned paper, which in describing actualities wanted nothing but a solid foundation of data. The geographer’s principal informant in 1834 was one “Khamisi bin Tani,” civilised into “Khamis bin Osman,” a Msawahili of Lamu who having visited the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa Lake, pretended that he had travelled to the Tanganyika Lake. I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude to Mr. Cooley for his courtesy in supplying me with references and other information.

[7] In the ‘Westminster Review’ (New Series, No. XX.) occurs the following passage, which sufficiently illustrates the assertion in the text; the critic is discussing Mr. C. Andersson’s ‘Lake Ngami,’ &c. &c. (London, 1856):—“African missionaries, penetrating some little distance inland from the S.E., recently brought information, which they received second-hand from Arab travellers, of a vast fresh-water lake far in the interior, described as being of enormous dimensions—as nothing less than a great inland sea. Frequenters of the Geographical Society’s meetings in Whitehall-place have observed in consequence, on the site which used to be marked in the maps as a sandy desert, a blue spot, about the size of the Caspian, and the shape of a hideous inflated leech. We trusted that a more accurate survey would correct the extreme frightfulness of the supposed form. Mr. Andersson has spared us further excitement. The lake turns out to be a mirage—a mythus with the smallest conceivable nucleus of fact. On the very spot occupied by this great blue leech—long. E. from Greenwich 23° and lat. S. 20° 21′—he found a small speck of bitter water, something more than twenty miles across, or the size of Lake Corrib in Galway. So perishes a phantom which has excited London geographers for a whole season.”

Had the learned reviewer used his eyes or his judgment in Whitehall-place, he would not thus have confounded the hypothetic sea of the ‘Mombas Mission Map’—a reservoir made to include the three several waters of Nyanza, Tanganyika, and Nyassa—in E. long. 24°-29°, and S. lat. 0° 13′—with the little Ngami explored by Dr. Livingstone and a party of friends in August, 1849, and placed by him in E. long. 23°, and in S. lat. 20° 20′ 21′. The nearest points of the two waters are separated by an interval, in round numbers, of 700 miles.