ideas of religious faith which are prevalent in these districts. nowned fane of the idols of the Sabæans. "A peculiarity of the Nile scarcely less singu lar, is that for upwards of six hundred and fifty geographical miles above the point just mentioned or in all full two thousand miles from its mouths, the river receives no affluent whatever on its left or western side. On its eastern side, however, within the same limits, it receives three tributaries, the Atbara, the Bahr-el-Azrek or Blue River, and the Sobat or Telfi, having their origin in the elevated table land of Abessinia." "As regards Africa, the fact is indisputableand it is one which is pregnant with inferences -that the greatest movement of the population is from west to cast and from east to west; pilgrims from the remotest regions of Western and North-Western Africa traversing the entire breadth of the continent, on their way to and from the Caaba and the tomb of their prophet and lawgiver. And this, indeed, is the road The first of these branches, called also the which has unalterably been trodden during "Bahr-el-Aswad or the Black River," from countless ages; for it existed long before the the quantity of black earth brought down by time of Mohammed, who merely dedicated to it during the rains, "is most important, bethe worship of the one true God the world-re-cause it contributes the largest amount of "The pilgrims who frequent Mecca are al- the slime which manures and fertilizes the most of necessity merchants trading from place land of Egypt." The third great tributary to place as the sole means of enabling them to of the Nile-of which the Sobat is a feeder perform their journey. And it is by the same-known generally as the "Bahr-cl-Abyad, simple means that the Mohammedan religion or White River," "is of great magnitude, has attained its great development throughout Central Africa-not by any zealous and expensive, or indeed intentional, propagandism, but by the casual communication between these Moslem merchant pilgrims and the rude Pagans through whose countries their route happens to pass. The strict outward devotional forms of the Mohammedans, and their constant mixing up of religious invocations in the ordinary processes of life, are no doubt mainly instrumental in bringing about these results." 66 and is said to contribute to the river nearly The name of Mohammed has been introduced into regions wholly ignorant of his divine claims, simply by the chant of the native Pagans who towed the vessels on the Nile, caught up from the Mussulman crews. In speaking of the sources of the Nile, Dr. Beke uses the expression in the most general sense, as meaning all the head- "There are two rules for determining which streams that take their rise at the extreme of the various head-streams of a river is entitled limits of the basin of that river, along the to be regarded as its upper course, and conse water-parting between it and the contermin- quently to bear the name borne by the united ous basins of other African rivers flowing stream lower down. The one rule is theoretical towards the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the or natural, the other is practical or conventional. Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, or (as in By the former the greater length and size and the case of some Asiatic, American, and also the river are the main considerations. By the the general direction of the valley or basin of other African rivers) forming separate inland latter it is the first acquaintance which the inhydrographical systems unconnected with habitants or discoverers of the valley of the main the ocean." Proceeding with this under-stream may make with one of its branches (or standing, our author points first to the remarkable fact that "For a distance of more than thirteen hundred geographical miles from the Mediterranean, into which it discharges its waters by several mouths, this mighty river, the largest of the African continent, and probably unsurpassed in length by any river in the whole world, is a single stream. Fed by the copious rains of the tropics collected by its innumerable head-streams in the south, it is able to contend with the burning sun and the scarcely less burning sands of Nubia and Egypt throughout this extent of country, without the aid of a single tributary; a phenomenon presented by no other river. the converse), that causes the name of the for mer to be carried over to the latter. "In the case of the great river of Africa it fortunately happens, that through the far greater portion of its course both rules are applicable; the direct and main stream having been the first known and first explored. Herodotus and all writers anterior to Ptolemy concur in describing the Nile as coming from the west, and the first explorers on record, namely, Nero's two cen turions, passing by the mouths of the Astobaras or Atbara, the Astapus or Abai, and the Astasobas or Sobat,-all three affluents of the Nile on its right or eastern bank,-penetrated up the main-stream, in a direction always tending tow ards the west, as far as the ninth parallel of north latitude the river there still coming from the west or south-west. Thus far, it is manifest, theory and practice went hand in hand. "From this point Claudius Ptolemy takes of the description of the river; and since his time the sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon, with their snows, lakes, and cannibals, have been prominent and established features of African geography." Here, unfortunately, facts end and conjecture alone remains. The last pages of Dr. Beke's volume are, we must say, rather disappointing to those who have been led on to that point by his somewhat too solemn prefatory axioms. The existence of these Lunar mountains is, we believe, still strenuously denied. All the learned geographer is able to say is: "It is, however, of little avail to reason on insufficient data. This alone is certain, that all the head-streams of the Nile must be thoroughly explored before it would be in our power to finally and irrevocably to decide which among them is entitled to the designation of the Source of the Nile. Till then we must remain content to own, with the poet "Arcanum natura caput non prodidit ulili, Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre."" Whether, therefore, the "Tubiri," or the "Sobat," or any other of the feeders of the "White River" is to be considered as representing the ultimate head-stream of the Nile,-and in what exact district, lake, or moon-mountains the "source" of the "Nile" is to be found,-remain as much as ever undecided questions, although undoubtedly Dr. Beke's volume simplifies the matter by reducing the points which have to be discussed within a definite and comparatively narrow compass, and extinguishing those claims which are entirely beside the question. Much of the interest of his volume consists in the subjects incidentally discussed. Among these, the possibility of turning the course of the waters of the Nile away from Egypt and discharging them into the Red "In the Sea is one of the most curious. beginning of the sixteenth century, it was a matter of popular belief in Europe that the king of Abessinia could prevent the Nile from flowing down into Egypt, and that the ruler of the latter country had in consehim a large yearly tribute." quence to pay Dr. Beke is extremely hostile throughout his volume to the celebrated traveller Bruce, whom he accuses, on the alleged authority of that traveller's own journals, of wilful misstatements and pure inventions in his published works. On the point of turning the Nile, he brands as apocryphal a story alleged by Bruce to have been told him "by Emmaha Yésus, Prince of Shoa, a young man between twenty-six and twenty-eight years of age, with whom the traveller lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, and from whose mouth he received some minute and circumstantial details respecting certain works, constructed in Shoa, by Lalibala, king of Abessinia, for the purpose of turning into or towards the Indian Ocean certain head-streams of the Nile within that kingdom." "Half a century ago, Mr. Salt was led to doubt the tale, in consequence of the assurance given him by a native scribe, who had personally known Bruce in Abessinia, that Emmaha Yésus never visited Gondar during that traveller's stay there, and from the fact that no account of that prince's alleged visit is to be found in Bruce's original memoranda, where it could hardly have failed to be recorded. Since Salt's time, the kingdom of Shoa has been visited by several Europeans, myself among the number; and it is now known, as an historical fact, that the reign of Emmaha Yésus, the great-grandfather of the late King Sáhela Selássye, lasted from 1742 to 1774; so that, in the year 1770, when Bruce pretends to have known that prince at Gondar, as a young man between twenty-six and twenty-eight years, who had brought tribute from his father as a vassal of the emperor, Emmaha Yésus had himself been upwards of twentyeight years seated on the throne of the independent kingdom of Shoa. It might be shown that the description so elaborately given by Bruce, on the pretended report of Emmaha Yésus, of the gigantic works constructed by King Lalibala in the vicinity of Lake Zuwái in Southern AbesBut it is needless sinia, is simply a romance. to pursue the subject. It is merely requisite to remark that, so intimately has Bruce's circum stantial narrative associated King Lalibala and Lake Zuwái with the traditional history, and so thoroughly have, on his authority, those two ideas become blended with the primary one, that subsequent travellers and writers have taken their connection for granted, and have treated the subject as if Bruce's fallacious commentary were an integral and essential portion of the original tradition. The time has however arrived when the whole of these erroneous notions may be discarded. The Astaboras, Atbara or Tákkazye, is the 'Nile' of Elmazin, Cantacuzene and Albuquerque: and the channel by which its waters might be made to pass into the Red Sea is Artemidorus' branch' of that river, or the lower course of the Khor-el-Gash. "At the present day the plain country lying on the eastern side of the Atbara, formerly subject to the Axumite or Ethiopian monarchs, is occupied by tribes of doubtful origin, who continue to avail themselves of the facilities afforded by the physical character of the land, for diverting the course of the river flowing through it, and preventing its waters from reaching the regions lying lower down the stream; though in this instance it is not the Atbara itself, but the Khor-el-Gash, on which the operation is performed. "M. Ferdinand Werne, who in 1840 accom panied the Turco-Egyptian army uuder Ahmed, might by similar means be turned into the bed Pasha in its campaign against Taka and the of the Khor-el-Gash; or to express it more disneighboring districts, gives, in his published rela- tinetly, they might be discharged into the plain tion of the expedition, a circumstantial account country of Taka, over which (as has been shown of an attempt made by the pasha, at the sug-in a preceding page) the waters from the Abesgestion of Mohammed Ehle, one of the native sinian highlands spread themselves during the chiefs, to dam up the Khor-el-Gash near Kassela- rains, and from whence, at Fillik, they pass el-Lus, and to turn its waters into the Atbara. away by two different outlets, the one into the The attempt failed, from the works having been Atbara itself lower down its course, and the badly constructed; but the particulars recorded other down the valley leading towards the Red by M. Werne sufficiently prove the practicability Sea near Suwakin; and the one of those two of the undertaking under more favorable circum- outlets being closed, the entire waters would of necessity pass away by the other." stances. "But if, as it appears from M. Werne's statement and from what we otherwise know of the extremely level character of the country, the waters of the Khor-el-Gash may be turned into the Atbara by means of a mere embankment and canal, the converse must be likewise practicable; that is to say, the waters of the Aibara From these extracts, it will be seen that to those who are interested in tracing out what we may call the natural routes of commerce, Dr. Beke has contributed a volume which will be a welcome book of reference and a trustworthy guide. THE American people are not a polite race, | not very refined in their manners, nor very congenial in feeling with the denizens of the old world, but they are essentially, in their own phraseology, a go a-head people. They always contrive to weather upon us in all that pertains to competition or "battles by land and fights by sea." If not by downright fair means yet by some means or other, the Yankees always find a way to whip Johnny Bull. They taught us that 18-pound shot would not knock about a ship after the fashion of 24-pound shot; they let us into a secret (I know it is a sore subject) as regards a flat sail and a long hollow bow in yachts, they laughed at our disaster at Balaklava, and asked where were our revolvers, and told us that a body of Yankee cavalry 600 strong, if called upon to make that charge, would have fired 3,600 shots upon the enemy at a distance where missing was impossible, however they did full justice to the desperate valor of our men. They also claim for their war authorities more sagacity than our people possess, in having armed them with Colt's revolvers in the Mexican war some ten years before the commencement of the Russian war, at which time that terrible weapon was absolutely unknown in England. Again, over comes a Yankee with half a dozen American-bred race horses, and as opposed to all England, walks off with the great Newmarket Cæsarewitch and Goodwood stakes, and has lately been first favorite for the same operation at Goodwood. These American horses appear as cute as possums or coons. They run last at so many races that you begin to believe them to be as slow as tortoises, when, without its being at all accounted for, they run fast enough to beat all the horses that have beaten them. Waal, I guess Jonathan whipped us with big frigates, still, mind you, with frigate against frigate, so now he has produced a big giant, who nearly knocked and choked the life out of our small champion. Still, Tom Sayers was our pugilistic champion, and, thanks to his bull-dog propensities, is not to be choked off even by a giant; and as one frigate rates with another, so one fistic champion rates as a match for another, and thus Jonathan goes a-head. In the Crimea the American revolver pistol, or our improvement upon it, was denied to our men, but purchased by our officers at their own cost. We went through the East Indian rebellion with no sign of improvement in our cavalry weapons until the eleventh hour, when at last a regiment of hussars got revolvers, and their previously bloodless victories ceased, and sanguinary onslaughts were made on the flying foe by a weapon which proved as destructive in the hands of our men, when they got it, as in the hands of the Americans.—Examiner. AT the recent meeting of the British Association, Mr. Edwin Chadwick read a paper on "The Economical results of Military Drill at Schools," in which he alluded to the importance of children, both boys and girls, being instructed in the art of swimming, and mentioned that her Majesty had taught all her children to swim, and that the Princess Royal was a capital swimmer. Last year two thousand deaths were occasioned by drowning. The Augsburg Gazette states that the international congress of chemists, which was to have been held last spring, is definitely fixed to meet at Carlsruhe on the 3d of September. Letters of invitation have been addressed to all eminent chemists, and especially to professors of chemistry in public schools and colleges. From The Saturday Review. ONE of the most remarkable, as it is one of the most wholesome, peculiarities of our time is the constantly increasing recognition of the value and dignity of that body which our forefathers regarded as little better than a corrupt and humiliating drag upon the soul. Partly from the severity of the struggle for existence in which aspirants to distinction in every calling are engaged, and the consequent necessity for a close analysis of the elements of success, and partly from increased attention to the truths of physical science, the corpus sanum is rapidly vindicating its claim to be considered of at least equal importance with the mens sana. A popular and influential school of modern theologians requires muscularity as well as meekness in candidates for the Kingdom of Heaven; and in science the same manly and vigorous spirit has evoked that sect of muscular philosophers whose best-known church is the Alpine Club, and whose mightiest evangel up to the present time is assuredly the work before us. eye and steady of limb, his body should be composed of muscular fibres (and not too many of them), with just enough bone for levers, and just enough skin to cover the bones. He should be provided with digestive organs competent to extract "the immense amount of physical force expressed by four ounces of bread and ham " so completely as to carry him all day and anywhere; he should be able to find sitting on a knife edge of rock, with a few thousand feet of precipice on either hand, rather tonic and invigorating than otherwise; and yet his mind should be stored with the latest results of physical science, of vigorous logic, fertile in the imagination of theoretical conceptions, and subtle in devising experimental tests of their validity. To say that such a phoenix as this ever existed might be too much; but De Saussure, had he been a little more of an athlete, would have nearly realized our ideal, and among living men, Professor Tyndall, so far as our knowledge goes, approximates most nearly to it. Holding a place in the front rank of men of science, we imagine that among Alpine explorers he has a right to the An ingenious speculator, indeed, might de- belt (if there be one), no one but himself velop the parallel between the ecclesiastical having threaded the seracs of the Glacier du and the scientific sects to a great length. Géant without a guide, or stood alone upon The difficulties and obstacles which the Alps the summit of Monte Rosa. Much was to present to a scientific explorer are of a very be expected from the work of one so qualsimilar order to those which a poaching vilified to speak of the glaciers of the Alps, and lage on the borders of the New Forest, or a parish in the Potteries, offer to a reforming Professor Tyndall intimates that he at first rector. To reclaim the brutalized flock, to intended to address himself to youthful readdevelope the germs of moral beauty and ers; and, though his book is now laden with order which lie within their rugged souls, in- grave and weighty scientific discussions, a finite Greek, the deepest acquaintance with certain vigorous simplicity of style lightens theology, and even the milder Christian its pages, and its boyish, sometimes (if we graces are of little worth, if unaccompanied may be pardoned for saying so) almost heedby that enduring energy and iron will whose less love of adventure-its genuine warmth of existence is incompatible with real physical appreciation for all forms of natural beauty, weakness and insignficance. In like man- from the "awful rose of dawn" to the rosy ner, the absent, meditative, sage type of phi- cream-and-strawberry maiden of La Cascade losopher would fare but ill among the moun--appeals forcibly to all the youth that is tains. Even if a crevasse did not swallow left under the crust of one's manhood. Inhim at an early stage of his studies, the first few hours spent among the "ponts," or amidst the promiscuous solid angles of a moraine, would strand him hopelessly winded, dizzy, and foot-sore, long before his intellect had come within reach of the facts whose significance it would fain master. So far as we can gather from much reading and a little personal experience, an Alpine explorer should combine as nearly as possible the distinctive peculiarities of Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thomas Sayers. Quick of much will be found in it. deed, the first part of the work, which mainly consists of a personal narrative of the events of the various excursions in which were collected the materials for the successive memoirs wherein the author has embodied his views, is full of pleasant and stirring episodes. On moral grounds, we object to the evisceration of a good book, and therefore we refer those who enjoy such reading to the book itself; but there is one story we must quote for the advantage of our numerous political readers. Professor Tyndall is trying to go to sleep: The Glacier's of the Alps. Being a Narrative of Excursions and Ascents; an Account of the Origin and Phenomena of Glaciers; and an Exposi- "Sometimes I dozed; but always as this was tion of the Physical Principles to which they are re-about to deepen into positive sleep, it was rudely lated. By John Tyndall. London: Murray. 1860. awakened by the clamor of a group of pigs which occupied the ground-floor of our dwelling. The object of each individual was to secure for himself the maximum amount of heat, and hence the outside members were incessantly trying to become inside ones. It was the struggle of Radical and Conservative among the pachyderms, the politics being determined by the accident of position." We trust that Dr. Tyndall is incapable of slily introducing a sarcastic allegory into a scientific work, but really the scene might as well be laid at Westminster as on the Gebatsch Alp. that of a fluid. But Monseigneur Renduwhile stating the fact in language which for thoroughly scientific clearness and definition has not been surpassed by any subsequent writer-fully perceived and admitted the difficulty of reconciling the riverlike movement of a glacier with the known physical properties of ice. Subsequent observers, such as Agassiz and Forbes, gave a more definite numerical expression of the law of motion enunciated by Rendu, but it cannot be said that they offered any explanation of it. Take, for instance, the well-known The second part of the Glaciers of the "viscous theory." If ice could have been Alps, however, is that which will attract the shown to possess those properties which dismost attention from that considerable and tinguish a viscous body from an ordinary increasing class of readers who take a scien- fluid, such viscosity of its component subtific interest in Alpine phenomena, and more stance might have been adduced with jusparticularly in the great problems connected tice as the property upon which the peculiar with the structure and mode of motion of mode of motion of a glacier depended. The glaciers. In order to understand Professor viscosity in short, would have "explained" Tyndall's relation to these much discussed the phenomena of glacier-motion. But since questions, we must bring before our minds ice, however examined, obstinately refused what was the state of knowledge and of to exhibit a single trace of those properties opinion on glacier matters in the year 1856, which distinguish a viscous body from a when a chance suggestion led him to devote brittle solid, on the one hand, and a fluid on himself to these investigations. It had been the other, the assertion that the mode of positively ascertained that a glacier moves; motion of a glacier depends upon its viscosthat its centre moves faster than its sides; ity involved a purely gratuitous hypothesis. and that in many other respects the behav- In other words, the motion of the glacier ior of a glacier is curiously analogous to that was explained by assuming ice to possess a of a fluid in motion. It was known that the property not a trace of whose existence could ice of the middle and lower part of a glacier be demonstrated. The viscous theory was presents a peculiar" veined " or " ribboned" helped out of these difficulties by various structure, and it was certain that this "blue suppositions. At one time, it was suggested veined" ice was in some way produced by that a glacier is full of capillary cracks filled the modification of the white vesicular ice with water, and that the main agent in proof the upper regions, which again proceeded pelling it is hydrostatic pressure-at anfrom the nève, the result of the successive other, that its parts slide past one another, snowfalls in the highest parts of the moun- and are re-united by the conjoined effects of tains. Finally, what may be termed the ac-"time and cohesion." But the capillary fiscidents of a glacier, such as the stone tables sures do not exist, and it has yet to be shown and the "moulins," had been more or less that time and cohesion are as potent in givclearly accounted for, and the so-called "dirt ing firmness to a glacier as they undoubtbands" had been to a great extent accurately edly are in consolidating a theory. In like described. Each of the eminent observers manner the veined structure had been acDe Saussure, Rendu, Agassiz, and Forbes- counted for as a result of the original stratiby whose labors these facts had been estab- fication of the nèvé. It had been ascribed to lished, had promulgated his own theoretical the filling of glacier fissures with water, and views as to their significance; but no candid the subsequent freezing of that water; and and competent person will say that in the finally, to the re-union, by "time and coheyear 1856 either the mode of motion or the sion," of the opposed faces of incipient fisstructure of glaciers had been explained, if sures, resulting from the differential motion to the word explanation we attach its only of parts of the glacier upon one another. legitimate meaning the deduction of the Bat the observations or experiments necesphenomena exhibited by a body from its as-sary to prove the competency of any one of certained physical properties and the known these supposed causes to produce the effect laws of operation of the forces which act upon it. As Professor Tyndall clearly proves, the late Bishop of Annecy was the first to point out the wonderful similarity which obtains between the mode of motion of a glacier and assigned to it were, and are, totally wanting. Again, the "dirt bands," so well observed and described by Forbes, had been supposed to arise from the retention of dirt throughout certain transverse zones of the glacier, in which the superficial ice presented |