e shall find also, that the snow-peaked mountains
seen by the German missionaries, and considered to be the source of
the White Nile, are not more than about 300 miles distant from the
eastern coast; and it is said that no more promising enterprise could
be undertaken, than an attempt to ascend and explore them, starting
from Mombas. Barth and Overweg were at the eastern end of Lake Tchad
when last heard from; and we are told that the slave-traders, finding
their occupation decreasing on the western coast, have lately, for the
first time, penetrated to the interior, and tempted many of the
natives to sell their children for showy European goods. Lieutenant
Macleod, of the Royal Navy, proposes to ascend the Niger in a
steam-launch, and when up the country, to cross over to, and descend
the Gambia, with a view to discover new sources of trade; and Mr
Macgregor Laird is still ready to carry a vessel up any river of the
western coast to which government may please to send him. Besides the
travellers mentioned, there are others pushing their way in different
parts of the south; and the French are not idle in the north--they
have added to our information concerning Abyssinia, and the countries
bordering on the Great Desert. But in addition to African geography,
all these explorations have added to our knowledge of African geology.
A vast portion of the interior is supposed to have been an inland sea,
of which Ngami and other lakes are the remains; fossil bones of most
peculiar character have been found, but only of terrestrial and
fresh-water animals. A name is already given to a creature of a remote
secondary period; Professor Owen, from the examination of a few
relics, pronounces it to be a _Dicynodon_. According to Sir B.
Murchison, such have been the main features of Africa during countless
ages; 'for the old rocks which form her outer fringe, unquestionably
circled round an interior marshy or lacustrine country, in which the
dicynodon flourished at a time when not a single animal was similar to
any living thing which now inhabits the surface of our globe. The
present central and meridian zone of waters, whether lakes, rivers, or
marshes, extending from Lake Tchad to Lake Ngami, with hippopotami on
their banks, are, therefore, but the great modern, residual,
geographical phenomena of those of a mesozoic age.'

The publication of special scientific works is going on under the
auspices of different European governments. The