Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/584

566 the frontiers of Karewega, found Lake Akengara, noted in Speke's map. When last heard from, in July, he was on his way to Unamyembi, intending to explore Lake Tanganyika, and then strike northward to the Mwutan Nizigi. Commander Cameron's journey is claimed to have settled the line of the Central African lake-sources. The chief products of Central Africa are ivory and slaves. Westward from Katanga there are large copper-mines; coal, cinnabar, and tin, were found; sugar-cane, rice, wheat, cotton, and hemp, grow well; the vegetable and mineral products would make the people of Africa industrious and prosperous, were they not ruined by the slave-trade. The way to stop this traffic is to open up the rivers Congo and Zambesi, for there is a way across the continent by a system of water navigation second to none in the world. A missionary station has been established on Lake Nyassa, in memory of Livingstone, with a view to the suppression of slavery, and every friend of humanity will unite in wishing success to this philanthropic endeavor which Livingstone had so deeply at heart. A way has been found from Zanzibar to the interior highlands which is free from the fever-swamps of the old route, and also from that great scourge of East Africa, the tsetse-fly, a fact of great importance in opening up Central Africa.

An Italian expedition started last February, for the exploration of the country on the east coast between Shoa and Lake Ukerewe. After many hardships, Liece, the capital of Shoa, has been reached, which will be made the base of a scientific exploration of the lakes. The expedition is to be absent four years.

"I regret exceedingly to hear of the recent death of Mr. Rebman, the well-known missionary, who first suggested the existence of a system of lakes in Central Africa, which was verified by the discoveries of Burton, Speke, Grant, Baker, Livingstone, Long, and Stanley."

There is little to record in regard to South Africa. The diamond fields of the Orange Free State and the gold-fields of the Transvaal Republic have not only attracted the enterprising and industrious, but have also excited the cupidity of their English colonial neighbors, in a way which it is feared will prove anything but beneficial to the rising African republics.

During the last five years the great island of New Guinea, which thirty years ago was put down as an unknown land, has been the scene of active explorations. The country has been penetrated by way of Baxter and Fly Rivers for 90 and 150 miles respectively. It is peopled by a mixed race, Malayan and Papuan, brave and energetic, speaking different dialects, and at war with each other.

The country watered by the Baxter River is low, swampy, covered with forests of mango-trees and thinly populated, contrasting in this respect with the Fly River, which swarms with human beings. The Malayan population of the eastern shore are far above the savage,