—A banker of Altenburg recently bequeathed $187,000 for endowments in the University of Jena. The government of Saxe-Altenburg, however, retained $54,000 of the amount as legal duty, thereby reducing the endowment to $133,000. —Col. C. G. Hammond, of Chicago, has offered $20,000 towards establishing an endowment fund of $80,000 for the Congregational Theological Seminary of that city. Not long since Mr. Hammond contributed $25,000 for a library building to the same institution. _The endowment of the young institutions for the education of colored people South, presents a fine field for the exercise of such wise charity as is shown in some of the liberal donations above._ * * * * * GENERAL NOTES. AFRICA. —Dr. Laws, of the Scotch Mission on Lake Nyassa, discovered two coal seams on the north-eastern end of the lake. —The Akankoo Gold Mining Company has ordered the explorer Cameron to go to the Gold Coast to study the mineral ores of the grant which it holds. —Dr. Lanz has exploded the theory of converting the Sahara into an ocean. He reports that the most depressed portion of El Juf, the body of the desert, is nearly five hundred feet above the level of the sea. —M. Harold Tarry, a member of the French Sahara commission, has discovered, south of Wargla, the ruins of the large city of Cedradra buried under the shifting sands. A mosque and nine houses have been excavated containing columns, statuary and charred manuscripts. —The village of Roumbeck contains a hundred _toukouls_ (cabins built upon piles to preserve them from the ravages of the white ants). This is the chief place of the province of Rohl. Here are collected ostrich plumes, caoutchouc, tamarinds and cotton, which are sent to Khartoum. —The efforts of the French to find tracing for a railroad across the Great Desert to Timbuctoo have met with disaster. The great expedition under Col. Flanders, when nearly across the desert, was, according to most reliable reports, attacked by the hostile natives and destroyed. —Dr. Oscar Lanz, the leader of the German expedition to Timbuctoo, has accomplished the object of his mission. He started from Morocco, taking a south-easterly course across the Great Desert. In returning he followed the route to the westward toward the Senegal river, arriving safely at St. Louis on the coast, after experiencing many delays and hardships. He went in the disguise of a Turkish physician, taking with him one Italian and five Arab servants. —Timbuctoo is described as lying on the southern edge of the Sahara near the Niger, is five miles in circumference, and surrounded on all sides by plains of white sand. Its population has decreased, many of the houses are in ruins, but it is still the most important city in Central Africa and the great emporium for the slave trade of those regions.