'-^
 
 L I B R.AR,Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLl NOIS
 
 V 
 
 /
 
 
 WHO DISCOVERED 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE NILE?
 
 WHO DISCOVERED THE SOURCES OF THE NILE? 
 
 A LET T E [I 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON, K.C.B., etc., 
 
 PEESIDENT OF THE ROYAL GEOGEAPHiaiL SOCIETY; 
 WITH 
 
 AN APPENDIX 
 
 COXTAIig^IXG 
 
 A LETTEE TO THE RIGHT HOI^. THE LORD ASHBURTOX, 
 WHEN PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAELES T. BEKE, Ph.D., E.S.A., E.R.G.S., etc., 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'OBIGINES BIBLIC.E,' ' THE SOtJECES OF THE NILE,' ETC. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE: 
 
 11, HEIfRIBTTA STREET, COVEXT GARDEN, LONDOX; 
 
 ANP 
 
 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1863.
 
 TovToy fikv ovv tov [Bap/JaptKoi'] koXttqv irepioiKovaiv AldioTres avOpu)- 
 •7ro(pa.yoi, wy airo ^vtTjxwv Sa']Kei to Trji ^e\riVT)S opos, a<f ov UTro^ej^otrat 
 rets ■^(^Lot'as al tov Ne/Xou Xiixyai. 
 
 Abound this [Barbarian] Gulf dwell the man-eating Ethiopians, 
 
 EEOM the west OP WHOM EXTEND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MoON, FROM 
 
 WHICH THE Lakes of the Nile receive the Snows. 
 
 Claudii Ptolemcei Geographice lib. iv. cap. ix. § 3. 
 
 ^ uiuc Z
 
 TO 
 
 SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON, K.C.B., etc. 
 
 PRESIDENT OE THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 It has become requisite that I should thus publicly address 
 you with reference to the subject which now mainly occupies the 
 attention of Geographers, and which necessarily was the principal 
 theme of your recent Anniversary Address from the Chair of the 
 Royal Geographical Society. 
 
 On the 9th of last month, when it had been announced by 
 you that Captain Speke had "settled the Nile," though no 
 particulars were given, I took the liberty of addressing you 
 a letter, in which I stated that the question solved was in 
 fact this : — Is Lake Nyanza within the Basin of the Nile ? — 
 and I sent you a copy of a map taken from my work *The 
 Sources of the Nile,^ pubUshed in 1860, on which, for your 
 information, I had marked the two possible solutions of the 
 question. The one was, that if there were a range of moun- 
 tains crossing the African continent from east to west near the 
 equator, then Nyanza could not communicate with the Nile. 
 The other was, that if the mountains running from north to 
 south and forming the eastern side of the Basin extended 
 beyond the parallel of latitude in which the southern extremity 
 of the lake lies, then Nyanza would necessarily be included 
 within that Basin, and the streams flowing from those moun- 
 tains into the lake would be head-streams of the Nile. And 
 I pointed out to you that I had advocated the latter opinion as
 
 long ago as the year 1848, when, at the Swansea Meeting of 
 the British Association for the Advancement of Science, I read 
 a paper " On the Sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the 
 Moon ;" referring you to the abstract of that paper published in 
 the ' Report^ of the Association for 1848, "Transactions of the 
 Sections," pages 63, 64. 
 
 At the same time I recalled to your remembrance the plan of 
 an exploratory journey proposed by me, likewise in 1848 (and 
 partly carried out), for the discovery of the Sources of the Nile, 
 by penetrating from the east coast of Africa, near Zanzibar, as 
 Captains Speke and Grant have now succeeded in doing. 
 
 On the 11th of May, two days after I had so written to you, 
 I attended a Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, at 
 which you presided, when I publicly expressed myself to the 
 effect stated in my letter to you and here repeated. 
 
 After fuller information had been received from Captain 
 Speke, verifying the hypothesis I had so long maintained, I 
 addressed you again on the 19th of May, referring you further 
 to my paper of the year 1846, " On the Nile and its Tributaries," 
 printed in the l7th volume of the Society's Journal (pages 1-84), 
 in which was first given the key to the arcanum magnum of 
 geography ; and I stated that, as I had pointed out the position 
 of the Sources of the Nile, had shown the way to reach them, 
 and had actually set on foot an expedition for their discovery 
 and exploration in the position indicated, I was the theoretical 
 discoverer; and I requested you to recognize me as such in 
 your Anniversary Address. In doing so I naturally relied on 
 your impartiality, both in your individual character and in that 
 of President of the Royal Geographical Society, to give me the 
 credit that is my due. And, in order that you might be better 
 able to form an unbiased judgement, I referred you to the letter 
 addressed by me, on the 23rd of April 1862, to your predecessor 
 in office, Lord Ashburton, in which I had recapitulated the
 
 opinions expressed on the subject in the Anniversary Addresses 
 of the Presidents of the Society from 1848 to 1852 inclusive*. 
 
 To ray astonishment, I was given to understand in reply, that 
 either I must be content to have no allusion whatever made to me 
 in the President's Address, or else, if mentioned at all, I should 
 have attributed to me opinions which I was alleged to have 
 entertained and made public as long ago as the year 1846. 
 And this, it appeared, was to be done without taking into account 
 what I had subsequently published on the subject as facts from 
 time to time became known; which facts, though necessarily 
 occasioning changes and modifications in the details, have esta- 
 blished the general truth of my original hypothesis. 
 
 Apart from the inconsiderateness of overlooking (especially 
 after the receipt of my letters of the 9th and 19th of May) all 
 that I am so well known to have done since 1846, I was sorry 
 to find the opinions which I expressed in my paper of that date 
 far from coirectly stated in your reply. I would not do you 
 the injustice to imagine that you yourself had referred to that 
 paper ; for, had you done so, you would have been incapable of 
 so misrepresenting me generally, and even misquoting me in 
 one particular instance. My words are (in page 76), " The source 
 of the Nile is situate at a comparatively short distance from the 
 sea-coast ivithin the dominions of the Imam of Maskat." By 
 the introduction of the word " and " between the words " sea- 
 coast " and " within," I am made to have expressed the opinion 
 that the source of the Nile is within those dominions ; and you 
 then proceed to show the incorrectness of this opinion, which I 
 never entertained. 
 
 The intimation of your intended line of conduct with respect 
 to me having only reached me on the morning of Saturday, 
 May the 23rd, I had barely time, before the Anniversary Meeting 
 on the following Monday, to bring to your notice some additional 
 
 * Mj' letter to Lord Ashburton is given as an Appendix to this letter.
 
 facts to substantiate my right of discovery. The result was, that 
 on May the 25th you recalled the determination which you had 
 communicated to me three days previously, and in your Anni- 
 versary Address made mention of me on more than one occasion. 
 
 From the report of your Address in ^The Times,' it would 
 appear, however, that what you did say was said as if meant to 
 " damn with faint praise/* In this I express not merely my own 
 opinion, but also that of several persons competent to form a judge- 
 ment on the subject. Indeed your assertion that Captain Speke 
 has proved that the Mountains of the Moon, " which Ptolemy 
 spoke of as traversing the equatorial regions of Africa from east 
 to west, have no such range as theoretically inferred hy Dr. 
 Beke" may be (and by many is) understood as meaning that my 
 theoretical inference has been proved by Captain Speke to be 
 erroneous ; whereas the fact is that he has entirely confirmed it. 
 
 I should be sorry to believe you could have had any intention 
 to misrepresent me, or indeed not to do me full justice. I am 
 therefore led to conclude that you have (doubtless unavoidably) 
 relied for information and assistance on others, who, if not mis- 
 leading you designedly, have done so through great want of 
 knowledge of the subject. 
 
 Were it not so, you surely would not have spoken of the 
 " Montes Lunae of Burton and Spehe ;" for, as is manifest from 
 what is stated by the former traveller in the second volume of 
 his work ' The Lake Regions of Central Africa,' no two persons 
 could possibly differ more widely than they do with respect 
 to the "Mountains of the Moon;" — Speke calling by that name 
 a range of mountains 6000 or 8000 feet high, in the form of a 
 horseshoe or crescent, encircUng the northern end of Lake 
 Tanganyika; whilst Burton (in pages 90, 91) denies the exist- 
 ence of any such range, which he stigmatizes as " wholly hypo- 
 thetical or rather inventive," and contends (in pages 178-180) 
 that "from the fifth parallel of south latitude to the equator
 
 an elevated mass of granite and sandstone formation crosses 
 from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the centre of Tropical 
 Africa," and probably extends even to the west side of the 
 continent, there to " inosculate with the ridge, which .... is 
 popularly known, according to Denham and Clapperton, as 
 el-Gibel Gumhr, — Jebel Kamar, — or Mons Lunae." Within 
 " a huge gap " — " breaking the continuity of the line " — of this 
 vast equatorial range. Captain Burton places Lake Nyanza, which 
 he thus excludes from the hydrographical system of the Nile. 
 
 The existence of an extensive mountain-range, running from 
 east to west and separating Nyanza from the Upper Nile, has, 
 down to the latest moment, found many favourers among African 
 geographers ; and (as will, of course, be within your remem- 
 brance) it was publicly advocated by Mr. Galton, so recently as 
 May the 11th, at the Society's Meeting. It is in fact this vast 
 mountain-system of Captain Burton and others that I take 
 to be " the hypothetical chain of mountains . . . traversing 
 the equatorial regions of Africa from east to west," of which 
 Captain Speke is declared by you to have now established the 
 non-existence from his own personal observation ; — and not the 
 Snowy " Mountains of the Moon" of Ptolemy, — which are de- 
 scribed by that geographer as lying to the w^est of the country 
 of the cannibal negroes, who dwell along the shores of the Bar- 
 barian Gulf, near the Island of Menuthias (Zanzibar)*, the melted 
 snows from them being received into the lakes of the Nile, and 
 
 * To this day the tribes inhabiting the east coast of Africa near Zanzibar 
 are eaters of human flesh — the Nyam-Nyam of the Arabian geographers. In 
 the • Bulletin de la Societe de Geographic ' (3rd ser. vol. viii. p. 313), M. Eu- 
 gene de Froberville speaks of the Amakoua (Makua) as cannibals of the most 
 ferocious and sanguinary character ; and Captain Burton, in his work already 
 referred to (vol. i. p. 123), describes the Wadoe as addicted to "a practice 
 which has made their name terrible even in African ears." He fixes the 
 " proper habitat " of the Wadoe in about 6° S. lat., — that is to say, between 
 Menuthias and the snow-capped Mountains of the Moon — precisely where, 
 seventeen centuries ago, Ptolemy placed his " man-eating Ethiopians."
 
 which I had identified with the mountains forming the eastern 
 side of the Basin of the Nile, before any of the Snowy Moun- 
 tains, Kilimanjaro, Kenia, Doengo-Engai, &c., or either of the 
 Lakes Tanganyika and Nyanza, were discovered. 
 
 Under all the circumstances of the case, therefore, I feel it to 
 be due to myself to assert publicly my formal claim to be 
 recognized as the theoretical discoverer of the Sources of the 
 Nile, and at the same time to place on record my sense of the 
 unsuitable treatment I have experienced during the last three 
 years from the Royal Geographical Society, or rather from 
 those by whom the Society^s affairs are managed. 
 
 When I returned to England in 1860, after an absence of 
 several years, I did hope that within the Council of the Society 
 the old leaven of 1848 would have been exhausted. But to my 
 great disappointment I found that when, in 1861, 1 communicated 
 to the Society my paper " On the Mountains forming the Eastern 
 Side of the Basin of the Nile," it was refused insertion in the 
 Society^s Journal, or even in abstract in the Proceedings. I 
 was still more grieved in 1862 at the difficulties I experienced 
 in obtaining a hearing for the narrative of my journey to Harran 
 in Padan Aram, and thence over Mount Gilead into the Promised 
 Land in the footsteps of the Patriarch Jacob ; which occasioned 
 my letter to Lord Ashburton already mentioned. But the climax 
 has been attained now in 1863, when I have been informed by 
 the President that, in his Anniversary Address, of which the most 
 interesting topic is the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile in 
 accordance with my hypothesis and my plan of exploration of 
 1848, it was deliberately contemplated either to attribute to 
 me opinions which I do not entertain or else to ignore me 
 altogether. 
 
 I have the honour to be. Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient humble Servant, 
 
 CHARLES BEKE. 
 
 Bekesbourne House, near Canterbury, 
 June 5th, 1863.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Letter from Dr. Beke to Lord Ashburton, dated 
 April 23rd, 1862 ; with notes now added. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 I am sorry that my sending you (as I had intended) my 
 paper for the Royal Geographical Society before the meeting of 
 the Council on the 28th instant has been prevented by the 
 necessity of replying to the article in last Saturday's ' Athe- 
 naeum/ from the pen of one of the members of the Council, 
 w hich, if allowed to remain unanswered, would doubtless cause 
 the rejection of my paper*. 
 
 Sir Henry Rawlinson's public attack on me will be publicly 
 
 * The article in question appeared in the 'Athenaeum' of April the 19th 
 (No. 1799, pp. 529-531 ). It begins thus : — " Dr. Beke has been long known 
 for the hardihood — not to say extravagance — of his proposed reforms in 
 BibUcal geography. There is hardly a country, or a city, mentioned in Scrip- 
 ture which he is content to leave in the position ordinarily assigned to it. His 
 latest crotchet — for I can really call it by no other name — has been to apply the 
 title of ' Aram Naharaim ' to the plain watered by the two rivers of Damascus, 
 and to identify the Haran of Genesis with a petty village in that district;" * * * 
 which " village" the writer of the article, in the course of his argument, "in- 
 sists on," is " a place utterly unknown either in ancient or modern geography." 
 
 My answer, though written before my letter to Lord Ashburton, did not 
 appear in the ' Athenaeum ' till May the 24th (No. 1804, pp. 693, 694). In it 
 I reminded Sir Henry Rawlinson that what he styled ray " latest crotchet " 
 was one of the principal subjects treated of in ' Origines Biblicae,' a work 
 which he had known and studied from about the time of its publication in 
 1834. On October the 25th following (' Athen^um,' No. 1826, p. 530), I 
 added a reference to the ' Moshtarik ' of the Arabian geographer Yakut, who 
 flourished in the 12th century of our era, in which Harran is mentioned as 
 " one of the towns of the Ghuthah of Damascus." The three Ionic columns 
 still standing there, with the numerous other architectural remains, prove it 
 to have been in the intervening ages a Greek or Roman city, the name of which 
 is lost for the present, but might easily be recovered.
 
 10 
 
 repelled. I have no misgivings as to the result. It is not on 
 that account, therefore, that I now trouble your Lordship. It 
 is in order that hostile personal influences may not, as they have 
 done before, operate detrimentally to me in the Council of the 
 Society of which your Lordship is the President, that I feel 
 it to be my imperative duty, not less to your Lordship than to 
 myself, to lay before you a few facts which (I am convinced 
 your Lordship will agree with me) you ought to know. The 
 subject of Baron Vander Decken's visit to the Snowy Moun- 
 tain Kilimanjaro cannot fail to form a prominent feature in 
 your Lordship's Anniversary Address ; and in this respect like- 
 wise I venture to hope that what I am about to relate will prove 
 not merely interesting but useful to your Lordship. 
 
 In the year 1846, some time after my return from Abyssinia 
 (for my extensive explorations in which country I received the 
 Gold Medals of the Geographical Societies of London and France), 
 I wrote a paper " On the Nile and its Tributaries," which was 
 read before the former Society, and printed in the l7th volume 
 of its Journal. In the Anniversary Address of the President, 
 Lord Colchester, this paper was designated a " very important'' 
 one ; and in the opinion thus expressed geographers both in 
 England and in foreign countries have unanimously concurred. 
 
 In it I first enunciated my interpretation of Claudius Pto- 
 lemy's famous text respecting the Sources of the Nile in two 
 lakes receiving the snows from the Mountains of the Moon ; 
 and having, from the consideration of that and other authorities, 
 arrived at the conclusion that "^ the source of the Nile is situate 
 at a comparatively short distance from the sea-coast within the 
 dominions of the Imam of Maskat, the friend and ally of the 
 principal maritime powers of the world," I observed that " there 
 cannot exist any obstacle of moment in the way of setting at 
 rest this great geographical problem, which for thirty centuries 
 has riveted the attention of the civilized world, at the same time 
 that it has baffled the attempts to solve it made by the most 
 celebrated rulers of Egypt, from the Pharaohs down to Mo- 
 hammed Ali." * 
 
 * Journ. R. G. S. vol. xvii. p. 76. Captain Speke, on his i-etnrn from his 
 lirst journey, expressed himself in somewhat similar terms, sa)'ing, in * Black-
 
 11 
 
 Confining myself only to what has been recorded in the 
 Society's Journals, I have next to mention a paper which Mr. 
 Frederick Ayrton read before the Society in the beginning of 
 1848, and published in vol. xviii. of the Journal (pp. 48-74). 
 Mr. Ayrton, a member of the Council, was a warm partisan of 
 M. d'Abbadie, who pretended to have discovered the source 
 of the Nile in KafFa, several degrees to the north of the Equator ; 
 and his paper was a strong eulogy of his friend at the expense 
 of myself. Of Mr. Ayrton's paper the President, Mr. W. J. 
 Hamilton, spoke in high terms of praise in his Anniversary 
 Address ; and after reviewing our respective arguments (un- 
 favourably for me, and favourably for Mr. Ayrton), he concludes 
 by stating that the latter " shows that, as in a tropical climate no 
 great river could take its origin except amidst a lofty mountain- 
 range, we have no authority for looking for the sources of the Nile 
 in a district where it is shown no elevated mountains can exist."* 
 
 Mr. Hamilton's Address was delivered on the 22nd of May, 
 1848. Eleven days previously, namely, on the 11th of May, 
 the Rev. J. Rebmann, one of the Church Missionaries stationed 
 near Mombas, had discovered the Snowy Mountain Kilimanjaro 
 precisely where Mr. Hamilton said it was shown no elevated 
 mountain could exist! 
 
 Long before the news of this discovery could reach Europe — 
 in fact shortly after the date of Mr. Hamilton's Address — so 
 satisfied was I of the correctness of my hypothesis, that. Dr. 
 Bialloblotzky having volunteered to perform an exploratory 
 journey into Eastern Africa with a view to the discovery of the 
 sources of the Nile, I undertook the collection of a subscription 
 in aid of his expedition, which however turned out a failure, 
 
 wood's Magazine' for October 1859, p. 397, that his discoverj^of Nyanza had 
 '•' disclosed the probable and, he beheved, true source of that mighty stream 
 the Nile, and had almost, if not entirely, solved a problem which it had been 
 the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and 
 the ambition of the first monarchs of the world to unravel." 
 
 * Journ. R. G. S. vol. xviii. p. xxxvii. In p. Ivii, Mr. Hamilton asserts that 
 M. d'Abbadie had " succeeded in ascertaining the source of the main stream 
 of the Egyptian Nile — the White Nile, or western branch — which was sup- 
 posed, according to a paper by Dr. Beke, lately published in our Journal, to 
 exist two or three degrees to the S. of the equator."
 
 12 
 
 the traveller not having been able to proceed further than Zan- 
 zibar. I beg leave to lay before your Lordship copies of the 
 several circulars which I addressed from time to time to the 
 subscribers to the expedition ; from which you will perceive 
 that it was substantially the same as that which ten years later 
 was undertaken by Captains Burton and Sjjeke, under the 
 patronage of the Royal Geogi'aphical Society, and at the expense 
 of that Society and the British nation. 
 
 Mr. Rebmann's discovery of Kilimanjaro was, in the next 
 Anniversary Address (1849) of the President of the Society, 
 suitably described as " most unexpected.^' Mr. Hamilton con- 
 tinued: — "The discovery of this lofty mountain has been assumed 
 as giving additional strength to the arguments of those who look 
 for the sources of the White Nile to the south of the Equator ; but 
 its comparative proximity to the coast, and the course of the 
 rivers both to the north and south which would carry off a great 
 portion of the waters resulting from its melted snows, ought to 
 make us cautious in adopting such a conclusion without more 
 detailed information."* 
 
 I do not for a moment imagine that the President was not 
 perfectly sincere and even desirous of being impartial in the 
 controversy between Mr. Ayrton and myself. But the latter 
 gentleman, who was known as Mr. Hamilton's intimate friend, 
 was an active and energetic member of the Council ; and it was 
 not unnatural that his opinions and feelings should have had 
 greater weight with the President than those of myself, who had 
 no special representative in the Council, and stood in no rela- 
 tion, friendly or otherwise, to Mr. Hamilton. 
 
 The following year the President, Captain (now Rear- Admiral) 
 Smyth, when alluding to Mr. Rebmann's estimate of the height 
 of Kilimanjaro — 20,000 feet — remarks, "This circumstance really 
 gives a shade of probability to the hypothesis which suggests a 
 mountain-chain of 300 miles from, and parallel to, the eastern 
 coast, and from which the upper affluents of the Nile would issue. 
 But even if this assumption were proved as a fact, it would not 
 at all prevent the existence of other distant affluents in the 
 south-west and south." f I need scarcely remark that it is my 
 
 * Journ. R. G. S. vol. xix. p. Ixxvi. f Ibid. vol. xx. p. Ix.
 
 13 
 
 hypothesis to which "a shade of probability " is thus cautiously 
 but impartially accorded. 
 
 Before the next Anniversary Address the controversy betvreen 
 M. d'Abbadie (with his champion in the Council, Mr. Ayrton) 
 and myself had come to an issue. Having elaborately and mi- 
 nutely examined that traveller's alleged journey to Kaffa for the 
 purpose of discovering the source of the Nile, and having come 
 to the decided conclusion that no such journey had taken place, 
 I published, in the month of October 1850, the results of my 
 investigations*. The consequences of this publication were very 
 different in England and in France. 
 
 In the latter country, M. d'Abbadie, who was a member of the 
 Council of the Geographical Society there, was able to exercise an 
 influence on that body more powerful than that of Mr. Ayrton 
 on the Society in London. The Bulletin of the French Society 
 had long been opened to direct attacks on me, whilst communi- 
 cations from myself were refused insertion; and my remon- 
 strances against this injustice only resulted in his being allowed 
 to continue his attacks anonymously, or rather in the name of 
 the Society itself instead of his own. Under such circumstances, 
 I felt that I owed it to myself to return to that Society the gold 
 medal which it had awarded to me in 1846, which I did on the 
 2nd of December, 1850. 
 
 In this country, on the contrary, M. d'Abbadie lost favour ; 
 Mr. Ayrton left the Council of the Royal Geographical 
 Society ; and the President, in his next Anniversary Address 
 (1851), made the following pointed observation : — "I shall not 
 here allude to the controversial disputes which have so greatly 
 mystified the rise and course of that wonderful river the Nile ; 
 but must unhesitatingly express my own conviction that no Eu- 
 ropean TRAVELLER, FROM BrUCE DOWNWARDS, HAS YET 
 
 SEEN ITS TRUE souRCE."t And, whcu referring to the discovery 
 * An Enquiry into M, Antoine d'Abbadie's Journey to Kaffa to discover 
 the Source of the Nile : 8vo, 1850 ; 2nd edition, 1851. 
 
 + These capitals are Admiial Smyth's. He has lately informed me that, 
 having in the year 1817 expressed to the Admiralty his opinion that we must 
 look south of the line for the "Western Nile of Herodotus (see his ' Mediter- 
 ranean/ p. 488), his firmly grounded conviction on this point was the cause 
 of his strong assertion in thus addressing the Society.
 
 14 
 
 of " Kenia, another stupendous eminence covered with eternal 
 snows," he gave it as his opinion that the inland districts of 
 Eastern Africa, visited by the Missionaries, " must be recognized 
 as part of Uniamesi, or the Country of the Moon," and that 
 *' these elevated ranges appeared to be in the vicinity of the spot 
 where the source of Bahr el Abyad, or White Nile, would be 
 found."* This, it will be perceived, though I was not named, 
 was a direct and favourable allusion to my hypothesis of 1846. 
 
 I would here direct your Lordship's attention to another pas- 
 sage in the President's Address, as especially pertinent at the 
 present moment. After congratulating the Society on " the 
 learned and lucid dissertation" which Colonel (now Sir Henry) 
 Rawlinson, one of the Council, had read before the Society, on 
 the identification of the Biblical Cities of Assyria, and on the 
 geography of the Lower Tigris, Captain Smyth adverted to the 
 advance of the land at the head of the Persian Gulf "at the 
 extraordinary degree of a mile in thirty years, a rate of increase 
 probably about twice that of the growth of the Sunderbunds or 
 any other known delta ; " and he added, " This agrees, in fact, 
 with the statements which Dr. Beke, one of your Fellows, pub- 
 lished in the ' Philosophical Magazine/ as far back as February 
 1834, and in his * Origines Biblicae' in the same year."t This 
 should not be lost sight of now that my views in Bibhcal 
 Geography and History, made public so many years ago, are 
 being stigmatized as " crotchets." 
 
 The next President, Sir Roderick Murchison, went very much 
 further than his predecessor, Admiral Smyth, expressing himself 
 (1852) in the following terms : — "Wherever the sources of the 
 Nile may ultimately be fixed and defined, we are now pretty well 
 assured that they lie in lofty mountains at no great distance from 
 the east coast. In the absence of adequate data, we are not yet 
 entitled to speculate too confidently on the true sources of the 
 White Nile ; but, judging from the observations of the mission- 
 aries, Krapf and Rebmann, and the position of the snow-capped 
 mountains called Kilimanjaro and Kenia (only distant from the 
 eastern sea about 300 miles), it may be said that there is no ex- 
 ploration in Africa to which greater value would be attached 
 * Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. vol. xxi. p. Ixxxviii. f Ibid. p. Ixxx.
 
 15 
 
 than an ascent of them from the east coast, possibly from near 
 Mombas. [The very journey which I had projected for Dr. Bial- 
 loblotzky in 1848.] The adventurous travellers who shall first 
 lay down the true position of these equatorial snowy mountains 
 {to which our Abyssinian Medallist, Dr. Beke, has often directed 
 public attention), and who shall satisfy us that they not only throw 
 off the waters of the White Nile to the north, but some to the 
 east, and will further answer the query whether they may not 
 also shed off other streams to a great lacustrine and sandy inte- 
 rior of this continent, will be justly considered among the greatest 
 benefactors of this age to geographical science!"^ 
 
 In the following year (1853) I left England for Mauritius, 
 remaining abroad till near the end of 1860; and as I was thus 
 altogether out of the scientific world, and took no part in its pro- 
 ceedings, I need not trouble your Lordship with any further 
 references to the Addresses of your predecessors in the Presi- 
 dential Chair. 
 
 On my return to England, I found that during my absence 
 the current of opinions had been running counter to the hypo- 
 thesis I had so long maintained. Others had obtained possession 
 of the field, and I seemed quite lost sight of and (so to say) for- 
 gotten. I thought therefore that, in justice to the Royal Geo- 
 graphical Society not less than to myself, I ought again to place 
 my views prominently before the Society; and accordingly I 
 prepared a paper " On the Mountains forming the Eastern side 
 of the Basin of the Nile, and the origin of the designation 
 * Mountains of the Moon' as applied to them;" which I sub- 
 mitted to the Society on the 10th of May, 1861, but which, after 
 having been kept on hand upwards of three months and a half, 
 was returned to me on the 30th of August following, barely in 
 time to be read by me at the Meeting of the British Association 
 at Manchesterf. No reasons were given me for the rejection 
 of my paper ; neither did I, nor do I now, seek to question the 
 
 * Joum. Roy. Geogr. Soc. vol. xxii. pp. cxxiii, cxxiv. 
 
 t An abstract of this paper is printed in the ' Report of the British Associ- 
 ation' for 1861, Transactions of the Sections, pp. 184, 185. It was pubhshed 
 in extenso in the 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal' for October 1861, 
 new series, vol. xiv. pp. 240-254. ^
 
 16 
 
 decision of the Council. But I am bound to state that^ in the 
 opinion of many competent judges, the paper is of value and 
 most suitable for insertion in the Society's Journal ; and I am 
 willing to believe that, if your Lordship will condescend to peruse 
 the copy of it sent herewith, you will agree that there are in it 
 many interesting and novel particulars most pertinent to the 
 existing state of our knowledge of Eastern Africa. 
 
 I did not for a moment imagine that the feelings of any 
 member of the Council opposed to myself personally could have 
 caused the rejection of my paper, and I regret even now to be 
 forced to entertain such an idea. Still, when I see a member 
 of the Council openly arrayed against me, and recollect the 
 course of events when Mr. Ayrton was acting in the double 
 character of my opponent and one of my judges, I cannot but 
 have my misgivings. I have therefore decided on adopting the 
 straightforward course of making the present communication to 
 your Lordship. In doing so, I do not, however, ask you to take 
 any action on it as far as I am concerned, but leave it to you to 
 act in such manner as you may deem advisable.* 
 
 I have the honour, &c. 
 
 * The paper which occasioned this letter to Lord Ashburton was eventually 
 read before the Society on the 16th of June, 1862, and printed in the 32nd 
 volume of the Society's Journal (pp. 76-100), under the title of " Notes on 
 an Excursion to Harran, in Padan Aram, and thence over Mount Gilead and 
 the Jordan to Shechem."
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Vol. I. 8vo, with a Map, Price Seven Shillings, 
 
 ORIGINES BIBLIC^, 
 
 OK 
 
 RESEARCHES IN PRIMEVAL HISTORY. 
 
 The Author's views in Scripture History, Geography, and Ethnology 
 are fully enunciated in this volume, though the second, intended to con- 
 tain their further development, has not appeared. 
 
 8vo, with Six Maps, Price Six Shillings, 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE NILE ; 
 
 BEING 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE BASIN OF THAT RIVER AND OF 
 ITS HEAD STREAMS ; 
 
 ^v^TH 
 THE HISTOBY OE NILOTIC DISCOVEEY. 
 
 Pamphlet, 2nd Edition, Price One Shilling, 
 
 THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH IN THE 
 RED SEA. 
 
 Pamphlet, 2nd Edition, Price One Shilling, 
 
 A FEW WORDS WITH BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 ON IHE SUBJECT OF 
 
 THE EXODUS OF THE ISRAELITES 
 
 AND THE 
 
 POSITION OF MOUNT SINAI. 
 
 TAYLOR AND FRANCIS, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET; 
 
 AND 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
 
 #/^-