[36]. A delicate mercurial barometer (Adie), obligingly lent to me by the Secretary of the Bombay Geographical Society, was left for comparison at Zanzibar with the apothecary of the Consulate. On a rough mountain tour such an instrument would certainly have come to grief, as it afterwards did on the lowlands of the Continent. The instruments recommended by the Medical Board, Bombay, did not reach us in time; and the same was the case with the reflecting circle kindly despatched by Mr Francis Galton. We had in all four bath thermometers, and two B. Ps.; one used by Capt. Smyth, R. N., when crossing the Andes, was given to us by Col. Hamerton; and another (Newman) was rendered useless by mercury settling in the upper bulb, air having been carelessly left in the tube by the maker—a frequent offence. We had no sympiesometers. The instrument is portable, but the experience of naval officers pronounces against it within the tropics, and especially near the Line (6° to 8°), where its extreme sensitiveness renders it useless. Aneroids also must be carried in numbers, and be compared with standard instruments not so likely to be deranged: they are seldom true, and are liable to vary when ascending or descending the scale. My latest explorations have been made with glass tubes, supplied by Mr Louis Casella, of Hatton Garden: they are portable, not easily broken, and, best of all, they give correct results. Of course it is well to carry aneroids for all except crucial stations; and as for B. Ps., they are not worth the trouble of carrying.
[37]. Curious to say, M. Erhardt, who was certainly no mean linguist (Conclusion to Dr Krapf’s Travels, pp. 500 and 504), has translated, by some curious mistake, Kiboko crocodile, and Mamba hippopotamus. In the latter error he is of course followed by Mr Cooley, who (Memoir on the Lake Regions, p. 9) finds that I am ‘disingenuous’ in affecting to be astonished that he translates Mamba by hippopotamus.
[38]. The banana is the Musa Sapientum: the plantain is the M. Paradisiaca, and Linnæus picturesquely adopted Musa from the Arabic Mauz (موز): in India the small species is called plantain, the large horse-plantain, and the French term both ‘bananes.’ In E. Africa there are half-a-dozen varieties of the ‘Ndizi.’
[39]. Heeren believes, with Pliny, that the ancients discovered diamonds mingled with gold in certain N. African localities, especially Meroe.
[40]. Doenyo Mbúro, for instance, placed by Mr Wakefield south of the Salt Lake Naivasha or Balibali.
[41]. Dr Krapf writes, ‘Simba wa Muene,’ i. e. the Lion is Himself, or the Lion of the Self-Existent (God).
[42]. Mr Cooley (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 75) calls in Vuga, and gravely chronicles the valuable observation of ‘Khamis’ his ‘intelligent Sawáhili,’ who made it three times as large as the town of Zanzibar. He confounds (p. 63) with Dos Santos (History of Eastern Æthiopia, iii. 1), through 8° of distance, Karagwah or Karague with Gurague in Abyssinia, Gurague meaning the left hand to one looking westward, and thus corresponding with the Arabic El Sham (Syria or Damascus). We also find (p. 55) Sadána for Sa’adani, and Wadóa for Wadoe.
[43]. It is mentioned by Dr Krapf as ever having been occupied by the Portuguese. Mr Cooley (Inner Africa, &c., p. 34) modestly writes, ‘Kisúngo, more probably Kisonga.’
[44]. The German missionaries placed the Tanganyika Lake 600 direct geographical miles from the sea: I reduced the distance to 300. This was an error. But we had been told upon the coast that the Sea of Unyamwezi is in Unyamwezi, and the easternmost frontier of the latter region at Tura is distant 290 direct geographical miles from the seaboard of Zanzibar.
[45]. Denok is the Galla name of the stream, probably from Danesha, a townlet or encampment on the right bank of the stream, some three miles from the sea. Vumbo is the Kisawahili term. The Somal call it Gob, ‘the junction’ (hence the Juba of the Arabs, who cannot pronounce the letter G), and Gob-wen, ‘the great junction,’ a name also given to the settlement Danesha: hence the Hinduized form Govind. Webbe (river) Ganana (bifurcation) is derived from a village high up the stream. The Portuguese called it Rio dos Fuegos from the number of fires, probably of fishermen: the English, ‘Rogues River,’ a term which might be applied to all the streams on this coast.