of 2,161 miles, and from Pittsburg to Fort Benton, Mont., 4,333 miles. Lighter craft can ascend the Missouri to Great Falls, near where that river leaves the Rocky Mountains. THE ZAMBESI HENRY DRUMMOND AMBESI, the most important river on the East Coast ZAM of Africa, and the fourth largest on the continent, drains during its course of about 1,200 miles an area of 600,000 square miles. Its head-streams, which have not yet been fully explored, are the Leeambye, or Iambaji, rising in Cazembe's country; the Lungebungo, which descends from the Mossamba Mountains; and the Leeba River, from the marshy Lake Dilolo (4,740 feet), situated between 10° and 12° south latitude and 22° and 23° east longitude. These three rivers, reinforced by the Nhengo, unite to form the upper Zambesi (Leeambye), which flows at first southwards and slightly eastwards through the Barotse valley, then turns prominently to the east near its junction with the Chobe (Chuando or Linianti), and passes over the Victoria Falls. Thence, as the middle reach of the Zambesi, the river sweeps north-east towards Zumbo and the Kebrabassa rapids above Tete, and finally forms the lower Zambesi, which curves southwards until it reaches the Indian Ocean at 18° 50' south latitude. Fed chiefly from the highland country which stretches from Lake Nyassa to inner Angola, its chief tributaries are the Loängwa and the Shiré, the last an important river draining out of Lake Nyassa, and which in the dry season contains probably as great a volume of water as the Zambesi, and is much more navigable. Except for an interruption of seventy miles at the Murchison cataracts, the Shiré is open throughout its entire length to the lake. On the whole the Zambesi has a gentle current, and flows through a succession of wide fertile valleys and richly wooded plains; but, owing to the terrace-like structure of the continent, the course of the river is interrupted from point to point by cataracts and rapids. These form serious, and in some cases insurmountable, hindrances to navigation. Those on the lower Zambesi begin with its delta. The bar here was long held to be impassable, except to vessels of the shallowest draught, but the difficulty was exaggerated partly through ignorance and partly in the interests of the Portuguese settlement of Quilimane, which, before the merits of the Kongone entrance were understood, had been already established on the Qua-qua River, sixty miles to the north. The Zambesi is now known to have four mouths, the Milambe to the west, the Kongone, the Leeabo, and the Timbwe. The best of these, the Kongone, has altered and the channel improved recently. There are at least eighteen feet of water on the bar at high water neap tides; and steamers drawing fifteen feet, and sailing vessels drawing three feet less, have no difficulty in entering. The deep water continues only a short distance, and, after Mazaro (sixty miles) is reached, where the river has already dwindled to the breadth of a mile, the channel is open in the dry season as far as Senna (120 miles from the mouth) for vessels drawing four and one-half feet. Up to this point navigation could only be successfully and continuously carried on by vessels of much lighter draught-stern-wheelers for preference with a draught of little more than eighteen inches. About ninety miles from Senna the river enters the Lupata gorge, the impetuous current contracting between |