Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters - The Search For Mecca

426 APPENDIX.
general ideas of the countries explored. They
were imperfect,
as calculated and made in the
confusion of the multitude of matters that
crowd on the mind of an explorer, but infinitely
better than many of the published maps. Sir
Thomas Maclean, for instance, says that short
of a trigonometric survey, no river has been
laid down so accurately as the Zambesi; and
Mr. Mann, after most careful examination of the
series of chronometric observations which more
than once ran from the sea and Tette up to
Lake Nyassa, says that any error in the longitude
cannot possibly amount to four minutes.
Well, after all my care and risk of health, and
even of life, it is not very inspiriting to find
200 miles of lake tacked on to the north-west
end of Nyassa—and these 200 miles perched up
on the upland region and" passed over some
3000 feet higher than the rest of the lakes !
" We shall probably hear that the author of
this feat in fancyography claims therefrom to
be considered a theoretical discoverer of the
sources of the Nile. My imperfect longitudes
and sketches led some to desecrate the perfect
ones from the Observatory. Thus, Golungo
Alto, in Angola, was fixed by seven sets of
lunar distances; that is, at least sixty-three
distances between the moon and stars, and
probably a hundred altitudes of sun or stars all