The great event of the day at Sylt is naturally the dinner, which is enjoyed at the Dünenhalle, kept by one Master Steffens. Though not a native of the island, he has become quite naturalised. His great pride is his roast beef, which he puts on the table every day, and a smoke house, which he stands for hours watching, as the wind sets the hams swinging. His only annoyance is the "man at the beach hotel," his rival, who has set up as a landlord during the last year. Steffens despises this man, as Moses, the Prophet of Sinai, despised the priests of Baal; he hates him, as Brutus hated Cæsar, and fears him, as Robespierre feared Danton. But the best idea of mine host will be found in the following anecdote:

On the evening I arrived he received me, and declared that he knew me intimately, but could not remember where he had seen me. I could not remember either, and as I was hungry, from my long tour through the Watten See, I asked for the bill of fare. "Wilkens at Hamburg, and Steffens in Sylt, have no bill of fare; give me your orders, sir." I ordered a beefsteak. The beefsteaks, sir," Master Steffens said, "are eaten up, so I cannot supply you." "Then some roast meat." "Veal, perhaps, or mutton, or beef?” "It's of no consequence, so long as it is roast meat," I replied. "And soon. 22 Master Steffens stood for a while before me, apparently sunk in deep thought; then he took a pinch of snuff, and said, Well, sir, there is no roast meat, but I will go at once and bring you the best the kitchen and cellar can offer." Master Steffens went, and after half an hour a supper was before me, consisting of bread, butter, eggs, and cheese.

At Steffens's, the visitor is sure to make the acquaintance of Wulf Manne Decker, the factotum of Sylt. You see him here, there, and everywhere; and he is the Providence of the man who wishes to depart from the island, for he carries in his pocket-book the bills of every steamer and railway in the known world. To him you apply for everything you need: if you complain of the poor beer or the wine, within a week Wulf has porter and Madeira from Hamburg in his cellar; if the post does not arrive, only tell Wulf, and the next morning he will bring you your letters, by some mysterious process known only to himself. But his great mania is for printing, and his documents are found on every table throughout the island. He is, too, the bookseller of the island, and is careful to write legibly under each imprint his own name and titles. Another man whose acquaintance the visitor must not fail to make, is Captain Memertz Hahn, the richest man on the island, and who lives in a grand stone house, resting from the fatigues of his numerous voyages. The description our author gives of his habitat is very charming:

The pictures of the vessels the father commanded adorn the walls of the small keeping-room, in the post of honour being the Zebra, in which he conveyed one of the first German colonies to Australia, which has since prospered greatly, and in honour of the heroic captain has christened a village "Hahnendorf." In the opposite room our friend has his book-shelves, with a pretty little library, which it often afforded me great pleasure to examine. Here we have Walter Scott's novels, Marryat's and Cooper's romances; we have Mügge's Voigt von Sylt," and Henry 'Smidt's "Zu wasser und Land;" Gerstäcker's Travels and Kohl's Descriptions are also there. All in this little book world refers to the sea and distant parts. Nor is Dickens's "David Copperfield" missing; and, as if the book were most frequently opened at this passage, every time I took it up my eye fell on the description of the shipwreck on the Yarmouth coast, that masterpiece of word-painting, which represents the soul of nature and of man in their gloomy, almost demoniac, harmony.

The most interesting work on the shelves is, however, two manuscript quarto volumes, written by Captain Hahn himself, and describing his voyages and perils. The water-bailiff, too, has a rare collection worthy of inspection, consisting of derelicts thrown up on the inhospitable coast by the angry waves, and which he keeps in a barn, on the chance of their being claimed some day. Here, on our author's visit, lay piles of planks and beams of every size, rent and turned black by the salt water which had penetrated them. Here lay ships, buckets, and porter bottles and smalls casks here, too, was the taffrail of a schooner, with the name Magnet, sunk with man and mouse on the Norway coast, and cabin door of a brig, whose name or fate has never been discovered. It came ashore in the spring, and now lies in the water-bailiff's outhouse. It is in a good state of preservation, the paint is not washed off, and the following verses are legible on it:

Winds may rage and seas may roar,
We on His love our spirits stay,
Him with quiet joy adore,

Whom winds and sea obey.

And when our author translated these lines into German for the benefit of the water-bailiff, the latter nodded his head sadly, and said, Amen!" Before leaving Sylt, Dr. Rodenberg was honoured by a ball Captain Hahn gave him, at which some of the people appeared in the old Sylt dress. The chief curiosity with the ladies was the celebrated "smak (whence our word "smock"), the old Friezish shirt, with its countless folds, to make which more than thirty ells of fine cloth were required. The band was most original, consisting of four persons, to whom presently was added a most marvellous youth from the mainland, who played a most extraordinary composite instrument, formed of an harmonica, drum, and key-bugle all in one, which he played with his feet, knees, and fingers. In the softer passages of the music he, moreover, whistled the tune. The parting from these primitive people was really affecting: the whole population of Westerland assembled on board the steamer and shook Dr. Rodenberg's hand most affectionately, begging him to come again next year. But, alas! the travelling German's time is not his own. When the next summer came, the author spent it in England, visiting among other places the Isle of Thanet, and Guernsey and Jersey, of which he gives a most amusing account, which the reader will find in the volume from which we have extracted the description of a "Summer in Sylt."

NEW EXPEDITION TO THE SOURCES OF THE NILE.*

"Nili quærere caput."-OLD PROVERB.

WE were not a little startled lately by a friend forwarding to us the following extraordinary statement which appeared in the Cosmos for November 16, 1860:

"M. d'Abbadie has planted the tricolor flag of France on the Bora rock, situated in a forest on the confines of the country of the Inarya, and on the summit of which is found the mysterious source of the river Uma, which is considered to be the principal tributary of the "White River," or the Nile. This rock (Bora), which projects as a promontory towards the north, rises 8830 feet above the sea level; it is in latitude 7 deg. 51 min. north, and 34 deg. 39 min. east longitude."

The gentleman alluded to in this paragraph is a well-known traveller in Abyssinia. Dr. Beke is kind enough to inform us, in a foot-note to page 122 of his work, that "Mr. Anthony Thompson d'Abbadie is a native of Ireland and a British subject, as he was known and avowed himself to be in 1839, when in that character, and on the recommendation of the council of the Royal Geographical Society of London, he obtained from Viscount Palmerston a Foreign-office passport, though, since then, he has become a Frenchman by choice,' and is now known as Monsieur Antoine d'Abbadie." Nor are Mr. or Monsieur d'Abbadie's antecedents in other respects unquestionable. That gentleman happened to be in Abyssinia at the time when the results of the second TurcoEgyptian expedition up the Nile became known to the public. He had collected various particulars respecting the Uma, or Godjeb, in Abyssinia; and seeing this river marked in M. d'Arnaud's map as the head of the Nile, and being struck with the coincidence of its upper course with that resulting from the information which he had obtained in Godjam, he thought he might safely venture to appropriate to himself the glory of a journey into Kaffa-the native country of the coffee-plant, and whence it derives its name-across the "Nile," without being at the trouble of actually undertaking it. Accordingly, he announced to the public, both in France and in England, that in the month of December, 1843, he had crossed the Nile within two days' journey, or about thirty miles from its source, which he described as a small spring issuing from the foot of a large tree, "of the sort that serves in Ethiopia for washing cotton clothes," and as being held sacred by the natives, who yearly offer up at it a solemn sacrifice. To the right and left of the source were two high hills, wooded to the summit, called Boshi and Doshi, in the country of Gimiro or Gamru, adjoining Kaffa; the name Gimiro or Gamru being in his opinion the origin of the Djabal-el-Qamr (Jebel al Kamr),

* Captain Speke and Grant's Exploratory Journey. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. iv. No. iv. p. 179.

Mr. Petherick's Proposed Voyage of Relief up the White Nile. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. iv. No. v. p. 223.

The Sources of the Nile: being a General Survey of the Basin of that River and of its Head Streams, with the History of Nilotic Discovery. By Charles T. Beke, Ph.D. James Madden.

whence arose the curious error of the "Mountains of the Moon." The head of the Nile he declared to be in 7 deg. 25 min. north latitude, and 80 min. longitude, west of Sakka, the capital of Inarya; and as he made the longitude of this town to be 34 deg. 18 min. 6 sec. east of Paris, it resulted that the source of the Nile was in 32 deg. 58 min. 6 sec. east. Entertaining doubts respecting this journey, Dr. Beke was induced to investigate its particulars; and, in the year 1850, he published "An Inquiry into M. Antoine d'Abbadie's Journey to Kaffa to discover the Source of the Nile," wherein that well-known and accomplished traveller unequivocally expressed his disbelief in its reality, and gave in detail the reasons for that disbelief.

In 1859, a work appeared at Leipzig under the title of "Résumé Géodésique des Positions déterminées en Ethiopie, par Antoine d'Abbadie," professing to fix the places of eight hundred and thirty-one stations between Massawah and Kaffa; the extreme point recorded, however, being Mount Bora, in Inarya, in 17 deg. 50 min. 8 sec. north latitude, and 34 deg. 39 min. 5 sec. east longitude of Paris, where M. d'Abbadie now placed the sources of the Nile, alleged to have been discovered by him in January, 1846! This is far removed, both in time and space, from the head of the Nile announced as having been discovered in December, 1843, in the "Djabal-el-Qamr," the two hills called Boshi and Doshi-ridiculously, as Dr. Beke remarked, reminding one of the two sharp peaks called Crophi and Mophi, with which the priest of Sais tried to hoax Herodotus. Nothing daunted by these glaring inconsistencies and the exposures they entailed, M. d'Abbadie persevered, apparently, for we do not yet know the details of his actual explorations in searching for what are now designated the "mysterious" sources of the Uma, and after having twice discovered them before, he now finds that they are in latitude 7 deg. 51 min. north, and 34 deg. 39 min. east longitude. Every one has heard of intermittent fountains, but no one yet has probably heard of sources that are ever changing their place. Well may M. d'Abbadie call them "mysterious"! what are the sources of the Uma or Godjeb after all? They are the sources of a river which, having its origin in Inarya, which is close to Kaffa, like it a coffee country, and where that plant is indigenous, is in the country of the Gallas, and south of Abyssinia, and this river unites with other rivers flowing from further south to form the Saubat or Sobat, a tributary to the "White Nile." There is no tangible reason for identifying these sources with those of the river Nile, and the impetuosity with which M. d'Abbadie has hastened (suppose him to have at last arrived at the coveted spot) to plant the French flag on that which has only traditional pretensions to be the " Caput Nili," will be as repugnant to the feelings of his supporters in the Geographical Society of France as his abuse of the French flag will probably be elsewhere. There are among the members of the Geographical Society of Paris men of as high intelligence and high principle as any in the world, and they will feel naturally annoyed at M. d'Abbadie's imprudence; as to the sensitiveness with regard to ridicule being attached to the national flag, it is so great that the less said the better.

But

This river Uma, or Godjeb, seems destined to be a stream of geographical errors and controversies. As early as the beginning of the year

1841, Dr. Beke sent home from Shoa, or Shwa, certain information collected there by Dr. Krapf and himself, respecting this river Godjeb, and which they both believed to flow southward, and to discharge its waters into the Indian Ocean. Several months later, Major Harris arrived in Shoa, where he at once adopted the views entertained at that time by Drs. Krapf and Beke; and though in the course of the following year the latter traveller, on his farther journey into Godjam, obtained other and fuller information, which satisfied him that his former opinion was erroneous; and though he sent, he says, this amended information to England through Major Harris himself before his departure from Shoa, nevertheless, on his arrival in England in 1843, the latter traveller, in conjunction with Mr. James Macqueen, continued to advocate the identity of the Godjeb with the Juba river of the coast. And this they did so

positively and so unqualifiedly, as not only to induce Humboldt, Ritter, Zimmermann, Keith Johnson, and other geographers to adopt their opinion, but, worse than all, like all errors which, once promulgated, are so difficult to correct or set aside, we constantly stumble upon persons firm in their conviction that there are lakes in Eastern Africa which have a twofold flow-one to the Nile, the other to the Indian Ocean.

Again, another and further source of error, although not of the same magnitude, had its origin in M. d'Arnaud's map of 1842, which made the Godjeb a tributary to the so-called Choa-Berry, or Saubat river. M. Brun-Rollet and other explorers of the basin of the Upper Nile have ascertained that the upper course of the Saubat, coming from the country of the negro tribes of Berry, is called Schol, and in the last-named traveller's map, inserted in the "Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris" for 1854, the two names Schol and Berry are placed in such close juxtaposition, as, Dr. Beke thinks, to have suggested the probable origin of the name Choa-Berry, which he, in common with others, erroneously adopted as that of a separate branch of the Bahr al Abiyad, or White Nile, but which he now says is the upper course of the Saubat.

It is a remarkable peculiarity in the Nile, that for full two thousand miles from its mouths it receives no affluent whatever on its left or western side. On its eastern side, however, within the same limits, it receives two tributaries, the Atbara, or Bahr al Aswad, "the Black Nile," and the Bahr al Azrak, "the Blue Nile," and Dr. Beke adds the Saubat as a third; but the latter is not so much a tributary to the Nile, strictly speaking, as it is to the Bahr al Abiyad, or White Nile, of which it is an affluent above the junction of the larger rivers.

The first of these rivers, the Atbara, or Asbarrah, as the name is written by M. Linant, is also called Bahr al Mukadah, as coming from Abyssinia, which country, including the mountain districts of the Gallas, is known by that name among the inhabitants of the lower regions of Atbara and Sennar. As, however, the Bahr al Abiyad and the Saubat are known by the same name, it has little value in a geographical point of view. The other appellation, Bahr al Aswad, or "Black River," is more interesting, inasmuch as it marks a main feature of its current, which is that of bringing down great quantities of black mud during the rains, and contributing the largest portion of the slime which manures and fertilises the land of Egypt, and it also distinguishes it from the "Blue" and "White" Niles, the Atbara having also in its time