veller speaking of his own work, the "Lake Regions of Central Africa," as hitherto either ignored or forgotten except by a few esteemed friends? Why, the work is in every geographer's hands, and on the relative importance of Burton's Tanganyika, Livingstone's Nyassa, Speke's Nyanza and Luta Nzige, and Krapf's Baringu, lies all that is most interesting and important in the geography of Eastern Africa. If there is anything more absurd, it is when he says, "I led the most disorderly of caravans into the heart of Eastern Africa, and discovered the Tanganyika and the Nyanza lakes!" M'Queen's views with regard to the Nyanza, founded partly on the discrepancies in Speke's narrative, and partly on the few opportunities the latter had of sighting the supposed lake, are that between Muanza in the south, and Kira in the north, there may really be two distinct lakes; the northern, fed by rivers from the distant west, and the southern by smaller streams from the southward (p. 157). All Captain Speke's descriptions, he says, of the north coast of the lake apply more to the channel and course of a river than to the bed of a lake. This river, suppose it to be so, will resemble greatly some of the rivers in the tableland of British North America, alternately widening and contracting, communicating and interlocking with each other in the secondary lakes, so that they form a network, in short, of rivers, or branches of rivers and smaller lakes, with small rapids between. This is also, apparently, the view entertained by Major Burton, and it is not impossible but that such turn out to be the case. But if may this would in no way So, militate against Captain Speke's claim to have discovered the most remote sources of the Nile, until Lake Tanganyika is shown to flow into the same historic stream. The nullah of Urima, which M'Queen takes so much ironical pleasure in designating as the "Jordan's gully," is, apparently, more remote than Mount Kenia and its affluents by the Bahari-ngo, and there can be no question as to the lake that Speke saw with his own eyes from Muanza and Observatory Point on his first journey, any more than what he saw from Mashonde on his second. Should Ukerewe Lake turn out, then, to be apart from the lake which receives the waters of the Kitangulé, and should, as Burton and M'Queen opine, the various supposed outlets, or effluents of Nyanza to the north, be some inlets or affluents, and others effluents of other lakes, or prolongations of rivers, still would Speke have discovered two of the head waters of this great highland basin in the nullah at Urima and the River Kitangulé, only to be rivalled by the waters which no doubt further exploration will determine to be brought down from the easterly Mount Kenia. M'Queen founds his whole argument upon the "Jordan's gully," as he derisively calls it, being the supposed source of the Nile, whereas we have shown from Speke's narrative that the Kitangulé was also viewed as such after its discovery. This, then, resumes the whole question. There is, no doubt, a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence as to the possibility of Lake Tanganyika pouring its waters into the Nile, but the greater weight lies with the probability that it is an isolated basin, like Lake Ngami, situated between the watershed of the Nile and that of the Zambesi. The information obtained by Burton and Speke on the spot, and that obtained by Livingstone since, all point to this conclusion. The eleva tion of Little Luta Nzige may be over-estimated, but still there is every reason to believe that it is at a higher level than Lake Tanganyika. Speke may have carried his Mfumbiro group too far west, and have projected an imaginary mountain crescent, but still it is impossible to conceive that any man with a head on his shoulders should not have seen sufficient of the trend of the country, when in Karague, not to have ascertained if there was a westerly line of lakes and rivers flowing into the Nile. There is no doubt, also, that the Nile receives tributaries from the East African chain, or true Mountains of the Moon of Ptolemy, either by the Bahri-ngo and Asua, or by other lakes or rivers. But Kilima-njaro appears, by Baron von Decken's explorations, to be without the basin of the Nile, and it is not yet shown that any affluents to the Nile coming from Mount Kenia would be so remote as the nullah of Urima, and under such circumstances the Asua cannot be, as Burton advocates it to be, the true Nile. It also remains to be determined if there are not westerly tributaries to the Gazelle Lake as remote as any southerly or easterly affluents; but of this there is little probability. In the mean time, Speke has discovered one of the head waters of the Nile at Muanza, and seen its lake-like and island-studded expanse with his own eyes. Speke and Grant have discovered the River Kitangulé, with its own little mountain lakes, losing itself also in a lacustrine expanse. This was seen from Mashonde. They have also discovered various northerly affluents to the Nile, among which one fine stream, flowing over rocks, and having both falls and rapids, in the region of Chopi and Madi, or Modi, which appear to represent the Crophi and Mophi of the priestly informant of Herodotus. They also heard of the Bahri-ngo as being part of Lake Nyanza, or we will say part of its basin, and of Little Luta Nzige as constituting another portion, and whether, as is not unlikely, the Nyanza and its affluents turn out to be a series of detached lakes and streams, more or less connected at different seasons of the year, or it be, as hastily projected by Speke, one vast and continuous lake, it still, to all intents and purposes, remains, till the contrary is proved, the head reservoir of the Nile. We advisedly omit the word 66 source," so much disputed about, for to discover the actual source of a river a man must place his foot upon the most remote spring of its most remote tributary—a feat that often baffles the topographer, still more so the geographer and explorer. It is impossible not to feel, under these circumstances, that however fair a dignified discussion of the results obtained may be—an attitude which it is but just to say the French geographers have always preserved in the question—it is no less ungenerous to rail at Captain Speke for drinking pombe and flirting with black ladies (if M'Queen had been forty years younger than he is, and under the same circumstances, he might have done the same thing), or for being irritated with Petherick (a man who has, however, to all appearance, been cruelly treated in being deprived of his consulship), than it is envious and unmanly to attempt to depreciate the services of the gallant and much lamented traveller, and to detract from the magnitude and importance of his labours and discoveries. PAST MIDNIGHT-1865. BY NICHOLAS MICHELL. SOUND, ringers, sound a solemn peal-the Year, And claims, whate'er it brought us, still a tear. Sound, ringers, sound a mournful peal, for those Sound, ringers, sound indignant peals-the strong Sound, ringers, sound a requiem;-he who drew Sound, ringers, joyous peals;-a royal child Ringers, more briskly ring!-he opes his eyes, Ringers, more merrily ring!-Hope spreads her plume, Till beauty, sunshine, all the scene illume. Ringers, more loudly ring!-the heart shall feel Ringers, now blithely ring!-New Year, all hail! Ringers, all stoutly ring!-May England still Ringers, together ring!-This peal resound- The late lamented John Leech, Walter Savage Landor, and Captain Speke. WOODBURY. BY MRS. BUSHBY. PART THE FIFTH. I. DESPAIR. In a narrow, confined, airless little street in one of the most crowded and wretched parts of Westminster, a woman might have been seen one chill afternoon, tottering along the pavement as if she had scarcely strength to support herself, or to walk at all. She was very thinly and poorly clad, her drooping head and attenuated form in no way betokened the elasticity of youth, but rather the debility of age, and yet the figure was youthful; and the face, though faded, and its features sharpened by illness or want, was undeniably very pretty. There was beauty in the finely-traced eyebrows, in the long silken eyelashes, in the delicately-chiselled nose, and the short upper lip; but this beauty was partly neutralised by the extreme thinness of the pale, sunken cheeks, the whiteness of the lips, and the look of deep care which was settled on the no longer smooth and alabaster brow. The female, who was carrying a small parcel under her arm, stopped before a house of very narrow frontage, and casting an accusing or appealing look up towards heaven, she exclaimed, with almost an hysterical sob: "Oh, my poor children! my poor starving little ones! If I had only been paid one shilling, one sixpence, for the work to-day, I could have brought you some food; now I must only hear you cry in vain for bread !" The street door was not entirely closed; she opened it, and crawled, it might be said, up-stairs to a little room at the very top of the house, with one window looking down on the dingy street below, and with a slanting roof, which very much added to the miserable appearance of the tiny apartment. There was a mattress on the floor in one corner, and near it a little crib, in which a young child was sleeping. A deal table, a rickety basin-stand, a small clothes-horse, two straw-bottomed chairs, and a wooden stool, made up the furniture of this desolate-looking room, which, however, was tolerably clean. A trunk in a corner contained the whole wardrobe of the inmates of the room, and in a cupboard on one side of the small fireplace were a few coals on the floor, one or two necessary cooking utensils on the lowest shelf, while two or three empty plates and cups and saucers of the most common kind stood on the upper shelf. A little boy was lying on the mattress, crying, and a blear-eyed old crone was sitting on the best chair, rocking herself to and fro. The moment the young woman who had just ascended the stairs entered the room, the little boy jumped up and ran to her : "Mamma, have you brought me anything to eat? I am so hungry— oh, so hungry!" "Alas! my darling Alfy! I have nothing to give you!" said the young mother, in a tone of the deepest anguish. "What's in that parcel ?" asked the old woman, peering at it with curiosity. "More work to do," replied the younger woman, "but they have not paid me for the last. I begged so hard that they would only let me have one shilling, or even a sixpence, or one penny if nothing more, but I was told I could get nothing to-day; I must call to-morrow evening." "That's the way them rich sarves the poor!" groaned the old woman. "And if they don't pay you, how am I to get paid?" she added. "Oh! have patience till to-morrow," supplicated the poor girl, for she seemed still quite a girl. "To-morrow they will pay me, and then I will pay the shilling I owe you. And thank you a thousand times for your great kindness in looking after these poor little ones when I was out." "When I can afford to buy a new dress, you must make it up for me for nothing," said the old crone, who had no idea of performing any service gratuitously. "Oh, that I will, with pleasure!" replied the young woman. But the little boy was still wailing, and the baby woke up and began to cry too: the mother had sat down to rest, fatigued after her long walk, but the children's cries seemed to make her forget herself. She started up suddenly, and snatching the infant from its hard crib, and taking the little boy by the hand, she exclaimed: "Come, children! we must beg! God have mercy on me. I cannot let you starve!" The little one was wrapped in some sort of an old shawl, the boy had a tattered cap put on his bright curly head, and their young mother carried them forth, for the first time in her life, to ask charity in the streets! Ah! little think the gay licentious proud, Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround"; Ah! little think they, while they dance along, How many feel, this very moment, death, And all the sad variety of pain. How many drink the cup Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread How many shrink into the sordid hut Thought fond man Of these, and all the thousand nameless ills That one incessant struggle render life In the miserable abode of penury and hard work from which the young mother and helpless children emerged, it was not possible for "the conscious heart of charity" to warm-at least, though the heart might have warmed, for benevolence to extend itself, for all the denizens of the place |