Zanzibar, and the high interior plateau, divided from
one another by the East Coast Range, which is of granitic
formation, the same in its nature exactly as those
which they describe, and intersected by rivers so rapid
and boisterous that no canoes can live upon them; as,
for instance, we found the Kingani and Lufiji rivers
were when passing over the East Coast Range. There
the land dropped from 2000 or more feet to less than
300 in the short distance of 100 miles.
I will now proceed to give, first, the missionary
account in 4° 44' N., and then the Arab one in 2 N.
a debatable bit of ground, extending over 2° 44', or
160 English miles. Talking of the missionaries,
“ these two men,” says Dr Petermann, “ kept an annual
hygrometrical and meteorological register with great
precision and scientific regularity.'55' They had various
instruments with them; they fixed their station, Gon-
dokoro, at 4° 44' north latitude by astronomical observations,
and determined the altitude of the Nile’s bed
to be only 1605 feet above the sea, by numerous good
barometrical observations. . . . Gondokoro is surrounded
on three sides by small granitic hills, ranging
about 2000 feet high, which are intersected by the Nile
coming from the south, as the king of the Bari country
says, from 200 to 300 miles j f which is equivalent
to saying from the N’yanza, as it lies exactly on the
place he directs us to.
* In England geographers doubted this ; and after it. was printed, Dr
Petermann had reason to change his opinion. However, Knoblecher
was not fax wrong, as I have since made the latitude of Gondokoro
4° 54' north.
As the Arabs do not keep thermometers, scientific
instruments, or properly distributed months and seasons,
I must say for them that from 2° to 6° south latitude
we found the mean temperature in the hottest
month, August, to be only 80°; that Uganda must be
quite 4000 feet above the sea, to be higher than the
lake which it borders; that the rainy season is during
our winter months, but most so in the spring; and that
the rivers, as we see by the Malagarazi, increase more
after than before that date; that as the movement of
the rams tends from the southward to the northward,
advancing with the sun, the same influence that swells
the Malagarazi would also affect the Uganda rivers, as
they rise merely on opposite sides of the axis of the
same mountains. The Arabs say, as we also have
found it, “ that thunder accompanies nearly all the
storms, and the lightning there is excessive, and so
destructive that the King of Uganda expresses the
greatest dread of it—indeed his own palace has been
often destroyed by lightning. The Kitangule and
Katonga rivers are affected by the rainy season in the
same proportion as the Malagarazi, and flow northeasterly
towards the lake.* There the Kivira (island)
nver (Nile) of which they bring information, flows somewhere
to the northward, and is not a slow sluggish
stream like the other two, but is rapid and boisterous,
showing that the country drops to the northward.”
Now here, in 3° north latitude, where this river is said
to flow with such great rapidity, I think will be found
* The rising of the Katonga still puzzles me.