showing the location and accessibility of the proposed mission. The territory assigned is included in dotted lines, and is nearly in the centre of the map, which has been drawn in accordance with the latest discoveries. The sources of the Nile are indicated in the Victoria and Albert Nyanza lakes. The rivers Sobat and Jub are given as by the best authorities. The stations of Gondokoro and Fatiko are shown, and the general location of the various known tribes. The report says nothing of the Abyssinians in the northeast, being confined thus far to the most accessible portion of the region. The mission stations on the three lakes have been conspicuously lettered and underlined; that of the Church Missionary Society at Rubaga, the capital of King Mtesa, and Kagei on the south end of the lake, where they propose to have at least a depot; Ujiji on the Tanganika, where the London Missionary Society have located; and Livingstonia on the Nyassa, from which the missionaries of the Free Church of Scotland will move to a location probably on the west coast, where they will be free from the tsetse fly.
The proposed field will be seen to be accessible by the Nile. The cataracts have been ascended by vessels of considerable size, at very high Nile, but always with great danger and difficulty. It is more feasible to transport from Souakim, on the Red Sea, across the desert by camel-back to Berber, thence by steamer to Khartum and Gondokoro, which, or the military station only a few miles south on the opposite bank of the river, may be the best point of departure and depot of supplies. It may not be a matter of great difficulty to explore the Sobat and penetrate by it into the very heart of this region.
For the view of the field and the attitude toward it taken by the Association, we refer to the following report of the Foreign Committee, which was unanimously adopted and ordered to be printed at the last meeting of the Executive Committee:
REPORT OF THE FOREIGN COMMITTEE.
The Committee beg leave to report that they have consulted such books as have been accessible, respecting the part of Africa designated by Mr. Arthington, and have also obtained an interview with Col. C. Chaillé Long, the African explorer, who has penetrated both by the Sobat and the Jub further into that territory than any other white man now living.
From the information gathered, they conclude that though there are difficulties, there are no insurmountable obstacles in the way of the establishment of the mission proposed. The country has been visited by a number of explorers, merchants and officers of the Egyptian Government. Steamers ply up and down the Nile in close proximity to some of the tribes it is proposed to reach. Sir Samuel Baker has illustrated the feasibility of conveying steel steamers in sections across the desert, from Souakim on the Red Sea, to Berber on the Nile, at which point they can be reconstructed and used on the Nile and its tributaries. With a small screw steamer, a missionary expedition can explore the different portions of the country mentioned by Mr. Arthington, using the boat for storage of supplies, and as a mission house, until stations can be established.
The locality on the east bank of the Nile and along the river Sobat we believe to be more easy of access than either of the three central African missions established by the English and the Scotch on the Nyassa, Tanganika and Victoria Nyanza lakes, and that every argument for establishing these missions can be applied with greater force to a mission in the Nile basin.
Of the region and peoples accessible by the river Jub, your Committee have as yet been able to gain no clear information, further than that the high lands, extending back for perhaps twenty miles from the sea-coast, sink into low, marshy plains, through which the river runs as far as it has been navigated. The higher region in the interior, in which it must have its source, is as yet utterly unknown.
We not only deem the proposed mission practicable, but the call to it Providential. The attention of the civilized world has recently been directed in a striking manner to the Nile basin. The opening of the Suez Canal, and the explorations of Speke, Grant, Petherick, Schweinfurth, Long, Baker and Stanley, have familiarized us with the country and its people, awakening an interest in its behalf that is wide-spread; while the efforts of Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon for the suppression of the slave-trade open to this Association an opportunity for co-operation in a work consistent with its origin and history.