Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1875 — Mr. Stanley’s Discoveries. [ARTICLE]

Mr. Stanley’s Discoveries.

In order to understand the importance of Mr. Stanley’s heroic labors let us briefly survey the flow of the Nile. Following the tide of the tourists who enter Eygpt at the port of Alexandria we proceed from Boulac, the port of Cairo, along the broad bosom of a swift-flowing stream, and nearly a thousand miles from the Mediterranean, at the first cataract, all river traffic ceases- Nile traveling along this rente of gigantic ruins and imposing temples is a feast, and for nearly half a century it has been the fashion of the wealthier classes, craving curious sights in Oriental tends to spend a winter of luxury Idling along the stream. From the second cataract, 300 mites beyond, the provinces of Egypt are thinly populated. Tbe river, sweeping around a great bend to westward , leaps over cataracts which impede all navigation, and it is only when Berber, 2,000 miles from the delta, is reached, that the traveler is on the borders of Central Africa and in the midst of thoroughly aboriginal peoples. Away to southward, embracing over fifteen degrees of latitude, are tribes numbering as* high in the aggregate as 30,000,000 of souls, who have been the prey of slave-hunters, torn asunder again and again by native wars, but now happily attached by cofliquest to the fortunes of Egypt. It is over this wild and pestilential domain, to southward of Khartoum, that so many intrepid explorers have penetrated—the majority to lose their lives — and the prize has been the sources of the Nile. Mr. Stanley, who had been three times in Africa, at Magdala, Coomassie and Uj ij i, before entering upon the present journey, made a thorough study of the various routes by which he should approach the territory where the fountain-head lies, and in this inquiry he enjoyed peculiar advantages. On terms of personal in-

timacy with leading geographers and travelers of the world, seeking their counsel and advice, he at last determined to enter Africa by the old route of Speke and Grant, from the coast opposite Zanzibar, and his triumphant progress has been recorded from time to time in these columns. At last, reaching the shores of the Victoria Niyanza, he has startled the scientific world by discovering and fixing by astronomical observations, the flow of the Shimeeyu—a river 370 miles long, rising at the intersection of the fifth degree of south latitude and the thirty-fifth meridian of longitude east from Greenwich. Mr. Stanley describes this stream “as by far the noblest river that empties into the lake • • ■ the extreme southern source of the Nile.” It is a mile wide at the mouth, not insignificant compared with the White Nile, and is supplied by several not unimportant feeders. These affluents are fed by mountain streams which rise on the western slope of the great range of which Kilimanjaro and Keania are conspicuous peaks. This discovery goes far to substantiate the theory of Chief-Justice Daly, recently published in the Herald. The astute President of the American Geographical Society, going back to the days of ancient learning, has pointed out that the range of mountt ins to which we have alluded is the same then identified by Aristotle and Herodotus. Not only has he shown this, but the still more remarkable identity of the Albert and Victoria Niyanzas with the two lakes of Ptolemy boldly graven on his map.— N. T. Herald.