And I have long ago come to the following conclusions:
1. That the 30,000 square miles representing upon our maps the area of the so-called Victoria Nyanza represent not a lake, but a Lake Region.
2. That the Victoria Nyanza Proper is a water—possibly a swamp—distinct from the two mentioned above, flooding the lands to the south, showing no sign of depth and swelling during the hot season of the Nile, and vice versâ.
3. That the Northern and N. Western portions of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza’ must be divided into sundry independent broads or lakes, one of them marshy, reed-margined, and probably shallow, in order to account for three large effluents within a little more than 60 miles.
I cannot finish these lines without expressing my gratitude to Mr Wakefield for the interesting information with which he supplied us. He has returned to his labours at Mombasah, amongst the Wasawahili and the Wanyika, and as he has, I am assured by my friend Captain George, R. N., qualified himself to take astronomical observations, we may rest assured that with his aid the ‘Mombas Mission’ will lose nothing of its well-won fame for linguistic study and African exploration.
END OF VOL. I.
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
[1]. Mr Frere’s memory is unusually short. I intrusted the MS. to the Eurasian apothecary of the Zanzibar Consulate, and I suspected (Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. i. chap. i.) that it had come to an untimely end. The white population at Zanzibar had in those days a great horror of publication, and thus is easily explained how a parcel legibly addressed to the Royal Geographical Society had the honour of passing eight years in the strong box of the ‘Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.’