real importance. All hands 'would then be employed,
and luxury would take the place of beggary.
I must now (after expressing a fervent hope that
England especially, and the civilised world generally,
will not neglect this land of promise) call attention
to the marked fact, that the missionaries, residing for
many years at Zanzibar, are the prime and first promoters
of this discovery. They have been for years
past doing their utmost, with simple sincerity, to
Christianise this negro land, and promote a civilised
and happy state of existence among these benighted beings.
During their sojourn among these blackamoors,
they heard from Arabs and others of many of the facts
I have now stated, but only in a confused way, such
as might be expected in information derived from an
uneducated people. Amongst the more important disclosures
made by the Arabs was the constant reference
to a large lake or inland sea, which their caravans were
in the habit of visiting. I t was a singular thing that,
at whatever part of the coast the missionaries arrived,
on inquiring from the travelling merchants where they
went to, they one and all stated to an inland sea, the
dimensions of which were such that nobody could give
any estimate of its length or width. The directions
they travelled in pointed north-west, west, and southwest,
and their accounts seemed to indicate a single
sheet of water, extending from the Line down to 14°
south latitude—a sea of about 840 miles in length,
with an assumed breadth of two to three hundred
miles. In fact, from this great combination of testimony
that water lay generally in a continuous line
from the equator up to 14° south latitude, and from
not being able to gain information of there being any
land separations to the said water, they very naturally,
and I may add fortunately, put upon the map that monster
slug of an inland sea which so much attracted the
attention of the geographical world in 1855-56, and
caused our being sent out to Africa. The good that
may result from this little, yet happy accident, will, I
trust, prove proportionately as large and fruitful as the
produce from the symbolical grain of mustard-seed;
and nobody knows or believes in this more fully than
one of the chief promoters of this exciting investigation,
Mr Eebmann. From these late explorations, he
feels convinced, as he has oftentimes told me, that the
first step has been taken in the right direction for the
development of the commercial resources of the coun-
try, the spread of civilisation, and the extension of our
geographical knowledge.
As many clergymen, missionaries, and others, have
begged me to publish what facilities are open to the
better prosecution of their noble ends in this wild
country, I would certainly direct their attention to the
Karague district, in preference to any other. There
they will find, I feel convinced, a fine healthy country;
a choice of ground from the mountain-top to the.
level of the lake, capable of affording them every comfort
of life which an isolated place can produce; and
being the most remote region from the coast, they
would have less interference from the Mohammedan