Sunbury American

Believed or not, however, Bruce's account was true. He did discover the springs of the source of the Blue Nile. But the Blue Nile was much the wider physically shortest branch. It bore the same relation to the White Nile (which is the real river) as the Upper Mississippi does to the Missouri. It is the inferior branch. The real source of the Nile remained to be discovered, and is not yet known.

The White Stream (Nile) which is the blessing or health Western branch, is the largest. Prior to the expedition fitted out by Mehemed Ali, in the 1830, and in which Mr. Werne was a passenger, the farthest point reached up the Nile was in latitude about 10 degrees. But, although the source is not yet exactly known, we do know that it is very near, if not just exactly on the equator.

Mr. Werne, in this expedition, reached latitude 4 degrees, or nearly 400 miles beyond the previously ascertained limit. There was an obstruction or fall in the stream, and it grew narrower as Mr. Werne thought: but it was quite certain its sources of the Nile and the Niger will probably be found not far apart. They are said to be in the "Mountains of the Moon:" but who knows anything of the Mountains of the Moon? No one. There are unknown lands which may yet reward some future adventurers with the fame of discovery.

It is most curious, that the lat. 4 deg. (to which Mr. Werne penetrated) is several degrees beyond the point at which the heads of the Nile are placed, on our common maps, while it is certain that the real springs were yet hundreds of miles beyond lat. 4 degrees. All our ideas of Central Africa, (generally represented as a desert,) are deranged by the fact, that Mr. Werne found these remote regions luxuriant in foliage, and inhabited by dense swarms of people! These people were, some of them, gigantic in stature, while they were most savage in life.

The voyage of this Egyptian was one of peculiar interest. It has but recently been given to the English public, Mr. Werne being a German. Blackwood's Magazine thus speaks of it: We can conceive few things more exciting than such a voyage as Mr. Werne has accomplished and recorded. Starting from the outposts of civilization, he sailed into the very heart of Africa, up a stream whose upper waters were then for the first time furrowed by vessels larger than a savage's canoe -a stream of such gigantic proportions, that its width, at a thousand miles from the sea, gave it the aspect of a lake rather than of a river. The brute creation were in proportion with the magnitude of the water-course. The hippopotamus reared his huge snout above the surface, and wallow in the gullies that on either hand run down the stream, enormous crocodiles groped along the shore: elephants played in herds upon the pastures: the tall giraffe stalked among the lofty palms: snakes thick as trees lay coiled in the slimy swamps; and ant hills, ten feet high, towered above the rushes. Along the thickly peopled banks hordes of savages showed themselves, gazing in wonder at the strange ships, and making ambiguous gestures, variously construed by the adventurers as signs of friendship or hostility. Alternately sailing or towing, as the wind served or not: constantly in sight of natives, but rarely communicating with them often cut off for days from land by interminable fields of tangled weeds--the expedition pursued its course through innumerable perils guaranteed from most of them by the liquid rampart on which it floated. Lions looked hungry and savages shook their spears, but neither showed a disposition to swim off and board the flotilla.-Cin. Atlas.