Abstract
AT the meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday last, a letter was read from Mr. Thomson which had that day been received viâ Mozambique, ahnduhcmg the arrival of the East African expedition at Mbungo, at the north end of Lake Nyassa, on September 22. Mr. Thomson was unable to discover the Uranga country and river, described by the late Capt. Elton as lying near Merere's town, but he believes the river to be the Mbangala, which flows into the Ruaha. According to Mr. Thomson, the formidable range, called the Konde mountains, is simply the termination of a plateau which rises from an altitude of 3,500 feet in 8° 50′ S. lat. to not more than 9,000 feet at the lake. Mr. Thomson was to leave for Lake Tanganyika on September 28, and we may fairly hope that by now he has completed his explorations, and is on his way back to the coast. The papers of the evening were “The Grand Canal and Yellow River of China,” and “Hankow to Canton overland,” by Mr. G. J. Morrison. During the journey referred to in the former, Mr. Morrison was enabled to examine some 200 miles of the Yellow River, a portion of which has materially altered since it was described by any traveller, and his observations are, therefore, very useful. Mr. Morrison, it may be noted, is of opinion that the Yellow River is now flowing in its natural channel, and that in former times it discharged its waters into the sea north of the Shantung promontory. His description of the condition of the Grand Canal is also interesting, as he looks at it from the point of view of a practical engineer. The other paper, from which only extracts were read, described a journey undertaken with the object of getting some idea of the country through which one of the great railway lines of the future may be expected to run, and a portion of which embraced the rich mineral field of Southern Hunan examined by Baron Richthofen a few years ago.
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Geographical Notes . Nature 21, 265–266 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021265b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021265b0