collected ‘documents pour servir,’ which will be useful when a history of the coast shall be written. The worst part of the book is the linguistic; a sailor, however, passing rapidly through or along a country, can hardly be expected to learn much of the language. Meanwhile an important theory concerning the Nile Sources was published by my friend, Dr Charles T. Beke. He had surveyed and explored (Nov. 1840-May 1843) the Abyssinian plateau and the lowlands near the Red Sea, and he had determined the water-parting of the streams which feed the Nile and the Indian Ocean (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii). Whilst Ritter (Erdkunde) and other geographers made the White River rise between N. lat. 7° and 8° and even 11°, whilst Messrs Antoine d’Abbadie and Ayrton were searching for the Coy Fountains in Enaria and Kaffa (N. lat. 7° 49′ and E. long. 36° 2′ 9″); and whilst Mr James Macqueen located ‘the sources of the chief branch of the Bahr-el-abiad in about N. lat. 3°’ (Preface xxiv. Geographical Survey of Africa, London, Fellowes, 1840), and ‘at no great distance from the equator’ (Ibid. 235), Dr Beke announced at the Swansea meeting of the British Association, that he would carry the Caput Nili to S. lat. 2°-3° and E. long. 34°; moreover that he would place it ‘at a comparatively short distance from the sea coast, within the dominions of the Imam of Maskat.’ Rightly judging the eastern coast to be the easiest road into central intertropical Africa, Dr Beke, then secretary to the Geographical Society of London, collected a subscription for exploring the Nile Sources, viâ Zanzibar, and sent out Dr Friedrich Bialloblotsky to attempt the discovery. This Professor of Hebrew and literary man presented in February 1849 his credentials to H. M. the Sayyid and to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. The latter, backed by Dr Krapf, sent back the explorer to Egypt, without allowing him even to set foot upon the East African shore, and he was justified in so doing. The recent murder of M. Maizan had thrown the coast into confusion, the assassin was at large, and the motives which prompted the deed were still actively at work within the Island of Zanzibar. Dr Bialloblotsky could speak no eastern tongue, at least none that was intelligible in S. Africa; he was completely untrained to travel, he collected ‘meteoric’ dust during a common storm at Aden—_magno cum risu_ of the Adenites; he did not know the difference between a sextant and a quadrant, and he asked Lieut.- Colonel Hamerton what a young cocoanut was. Dr Beke, in his character of ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources,’ has published the following studies.