after the mission-house, the factory; after the factory, the fort. But do not let us delude ourselves with these dreams as far as Central Africa is concerned. While so many fertile and healthy regions of the earth offer immediate reward to capital and labour,it would be ridiculous to waste efforts upon a continent which does not possess a single great navigable river, which has no doubt immense resources in its bosom, but which at present yields little beyond ivory, inferior rubber, inferior ebony, and a scanty supply of gold, and which is girdled by sullen, treacherous natives, and by marshes in which no white man can live. Let us not sing of "Africa and golden joys," but take the common-sense view of the question, by putting common-sense out of the question altogether. Central Africa is the Holy Land of the present day. The old Crusading spirit lives; it is only the equipments that have been changed, the newest breech-loader for the palmer's staff, and Scotch tweed for chain armour. Explorers resemble the knights-errants of olden times; they exile themselves from society, and return (if living) after many years to be crowned with her laurels, and rewarded by her smiles. It is all so romantic and mediæval that I am only afraid it cannot last. Some modern Cervantes will arise, and, with a typical John Bull as Don Quixote, and some native Sambo as Sancho Panza, will "smile all our chivalry away," at least the little that is left. Well, that day must come at last. When all our coal and iron is exhausted, and England is made a meadow, and Central Africa has been rendered habitable, its swamps nicely drained, and its deserts covered with alluvium, some remote descendants of Sir Samuel Baker may perhaps take a villa on the shores of the Albert Nyanza, and go there in the dry season for the purpose of reading, "in the qua n characters of the nineteeth

century," the travels of his great ancestor upon the spot celebrated by his triumph. Nothing more romantic than those travels ever occurred in the ages of romance; nothing more poetical was ever invented by a poet's brain. It is all like a dream from the enchanted past, and, as if to crown the illusion, not even the gilt spurs are wanting. Sir Samuel is the first African explorer whose services have received public recognition; and this innovation proceeded from a Tory government,- -a solemn warning to those who disbelieve in supernatural influences.

This is the story of the Nile. There are two rivers, the Blue and the White. Bruce discovered the sources of the Blue Nile, previously described by the Portuguese Jesuits, and it was not known till some time afterwards that the White Nile was really the main stream. Its sources are derived from two lake basins (as Ptolemy asserted in ancient days). Burton and Speke discovered one of these lakes, the Victoria Nyanza, and returned to the eastern coast, whence they had started. Speke and Grant found the Nile flowing out of the Victoria Nyanza, and followed it down towards the sea. As they arrived at Gondokoro, a dirty little slave-station upon the White Nile, they met another party entering the arena which they were about to leave.

That must have been a remarkable sight. On the one side two weary, ragged men, horses, astronomical instruments, elephant guns, gaudy presents, and all the paraphernalia of exploration. At first Baker was mighty disconsolate; he feared that there was nothing left for him to do. But Speke informed him of the other great lake, which he himself had been unable to reach on account of a native war. This was the Albert Nyanza; and Speke, by putting Baker upon its scent, has earned his share in the honours of the second lake, as well as of the first. On the other hand,

he never realised the importance of this second basin; he always maintained that he had "settled the Nile question," and died, like Columbus, without having grasped the meaning of his own discoveries.

Baker stands supreme above other explorers on account of the remarkable obstacles which he overcame. It must be understood that the natural road to the Nile sources, by going up the river towards them, had been abandoned after repeated failures. The British government had sent in their two large expeditions (on the suggestion, I believe, of Dr. Beke), from the eastern coast, with the view of striking in upon the head-waters of the Nile by this more indirect but more practicable route. Sir Samuel, however, accomplished that which Mr. Pethe rick and other competent judges had pronounced to be impossible. It had been supposed that Gondokoro could be opened only from the inside; and that the Turkish slave traders, who justly regard British travellers as the forerunners of "abolition," would never allow one to pass that barrier. In fact, those who have read "The Albert Nyanza," which is as fascinating and dramatic as a novel, will remember how these gentry corrupted his escort, and threatened his life; and how it was solely by the exercise of a quality which, had he been killed, would have been called "lamentable rashness," that he succeeded in penetrating Central Africa at all.

Sir Samuel was accompanied during his four years' hard travel by his wife, a young, handsome, and very delicate-looking Hungarian lady, who on one occasion saved the expedition from ruin by her promptitude and tact; who, after they had discovered the lake, urged her husband to extend their explorations, in order to solve some geographical problem, although at that time she could scarcely walk; and who even showed that she could handle a

sword, and mingle in a mélée when his life appeared to be in danger. It may be remarked, by the way, that this young heroine does not consider it necessary to wear any such hermaphrodite costume as that lately adopted by Doctor Mary Walker, but dresses with taste, is perfectly feminine in her way, and passed through the somewhat difficult ordeal of a London season with considerable éclat.

Sir Samuel declares that he would never go to Africa again, but he has not kept his word. He could add nothing to his reputation, and he had fairly earned repose. But there is one explorer who made no such resolution, and who would inevitably break it if he did. In fact, Dr. Livingstone may be considered as a resident in unknown parts of Central Africa, and an occasional traveller in England. He speaks our language with a Bechuana accent, and has been seen wandering down St. James's Street, in the height of the London season, in a gold-laced cap and a thick Inverness cape. It is evident that he is not at home in civilisation; and as the Greenlander, decoyed to the sunny south, pines for his whale's blubber and his snow hut, so Dr. Livingstone escapes with relief from the pleasures and luxuries of the great metropolis to his dear Caffres and the homely comforts of the kraal. Not that this is to be wondered at. There is nothing so delightful as fresh air and liberty. It is a grand thing to be able to live in a country where one is secure from the tyranny of social observances, and can enjoy freedom without being compelled to wield the franchise in defence of it; where whatever is not suggested by taste is not dictated by necessity; where one is not shut up to the pain of wearing tight boots, or making morning calls, or go out to evening parties, or read newspapers, or answer letters; where one can return to the primitive simplicity and (if desired) to

the primitive nakedness of man; where the silvered surface of the mountain stream is the traveller's looking-glass, and the forest leaf his pocket-handkerchief; where he eats only when hungry (and not always then); where the wide earth is his couch to-night, and to-morrow may be his grave, and the round stone, now his pillow, may become his tomb-stone, and the gray fever-mists which are now his bed-curtains may be his shroud in disguise. Well, Dame Nature treats us badly now and then. Sometimes she makes it too hot for us, and sometimes too cold; sometimes too dry, and sometimes too damp; she blows her dust into our eyes, entangles us with her thorns, wearies us with her mountains, and half drowns us in her floods; burns us, poisons us, and sooner or later murders us outright; but then what joys she reveals to us if we desert the strong-holds of civilisation, and let her take us all up in her arms! It is not always that her features are dark and convulsed with rage, that blue lightning darts from her eyes and that thunder rolls from her voice, that venom falls upon us from her lips, and that she grips us tightly in her awful grasp.

No; often when we have closed our eyes, and are passively awaiting death, we feel those arms relax, and a soft, warm bosom palpitates beneath us, and pours its sweet intoxicating juices through our veins; and from her eyes, like golden suns, stream down upon us rays of maternal love and as we are borne along with an undulating motion, her voice murmurs music in our ears, her locks of hair are flowers which perfume existence, and within us we feel the vibrations of a mighty soul.

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It is a glorious and awful thing to be alone in the desert-a speck in the abyss. Behind the traveller is the memory of past dangers, before him is the absolute unknown. Every step is a novely, a sensation; the summit of every eminence may dis

close to him a prodigy; and all the while he is caressing this one idea :"I am the first white man who has trodden on this land, who breathes this air. I can call that mountain after anybody I choose: it belongs to me. The Geographical Society will give me a gold medal: I shall have to make a speech; my name will be printed in all the maps"and so on.

Well, I presume that this species of ambition is as good as any other, and it does not appear to be cursed with satiety as soon as the others are. No wonder that. Livingstone loves the wilderness. It is more remarkable that he should love the savage, whom Sir Samuel detests. But this, perhaps, can be explained.

The Anglo-Saxon explorer enters Africa with his mind fixed upon one geographical point, towards which he strides, impatient of annoyance and chafing at the least delay. The natives of the country he regards simply as savage or domestic animals. If they belong to the camel species, he uses them; if they belong to the tiger species, he overawes them or avoids them; and if they belong to what he considers the monkey species, he despises and detests them, because he does not understand them. Revering honesty and truth, he finds himself surrounded by dishonesty and lies; in every village he is the centre of intrigues; he is regarded as a bird of passage to be plucked; his dealings with the savage are those of buyer and seller, which are never of an elevating character, and in which the African certainly does not appear to an advantage. They, on the other hand, ignorant of the value of time, cannot comprehend his anxiety to leave them; they are offended by his brusqueness, and by the contemptuousness which he does not care to hide; and a bad feeling will often spring up from no other cause,

for they are the most vain and sensitive creatures in the world.