3 Degrees 32 Minutes N. They Had Heard That It Flowed Into The Luta N'zige, And That It Issued From It; Thus They Were Correct In All Their Investigations, Which My Discoveries Have Confirmed.

Their general description of the country was perfect, but not having visited the lake heard of as the Luta

N'zige, they could not possibly have been aware of the vast importance of that great reservoir in the Nile system. The task of exploring that extraordinary feature having been accomplished, the geographical question of the sources of the Nile is explained. Ptolemy had described the Nile sources as emanating from two great lakes that received the snows of the mountains of Ethiopia. There are many ancient maps existing upon which these lakes are marked as positive: although there is a wide error in the latitude, the fact remains, that two great lakes were reported to exist in Equatorial Africa fed by the torrents from lofty mountains, and that from these reservoirs two streams issued, the conjunction of which formed the Nile. The general principle was correct, although the detail was wrong. There can be little doubt that trade had been carried on between the Arabs from the Red Sea and the coast opposite Zanzibar in ancient times, and that the people engaged in such enterprise had penetrated so far into the interior as to have obtained a knowledge of the existence of the two reservoirs; thus may the geographical information originally have been brought into Egypt.

The rainfall to within 3 degrees north of the Equator extends over ten months, commencing in February and terminating in the end of November. The heaviest rains fall from April till the end of August; during the latter two months of this season the rivers are at their maximum:

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