CHLORAL.

"Gestorben istder Herrgott oben,
Und Unten ist der Teufel todt."

I WAS reading Heine's sad verse,
For I could not go to sleep;

"Here's your Chloral," said the sick nurse, And I took it like a sheep.

What? eh? oh! hang it ! bother!
It can't be as you say,
My wife's own dearest mother,
With the butler run away?

A woman almost saintly!

Sung hymns to sweetest tunes! What's that you whisper faintly, The butler's bagged the spoons?

I'll have him hanged and whip her-
Why, both my shoes are gone!
Here's a top-boot and a slipper!
What's that you say he's done?

My partner Jones absconded!
Cash gone, as I'm a sinner,
Why he yesterday responded
At a missionary dinner!

Give me a pen and paper;

I'll stop his game, I thinkNo, not that blotting-paper! Confound it, where's the ink?

You dare to say our Vicar

Was actually seen

Very much the worse for liquor

Upon the village green;

That the bishop took a shilling

To hush the matter up.

And down and down I tumbled,
Oh, fifty miles away!

I woke, and by my sick-bed,
There stood the kindly nurse;
"I've tumbled many a mile," I said.
Said she, "You're none the worse!"

"Oh, tell me, where's my mother-in-law?" "She's singing saintly tunes!"

"And tell me where's the butler?" "He's counting out his spoons."

"And the parson, is he sober?"

"Oh, he never takes a drop!" "And Jones, the vile old robber?" "He's attending to the shop,"

"My baby did she throttle?
"Oh, do not say it's dead."
"It's going to have the bottle,
And Jane will see it fed,"

"Oh, nurse!" I sighed half crying,
"It's an awful thing to say,
"I'd be glad, if I were dying,
That the devil's alive to-day."

J. T. W. Bagot.

NAVIGATION OF THE ALBERT NYANZA.

THE successful exploration of the Albert Nyanza is, after the navigation of the Victoria Nyanza by Stanley, and the discovery of the river Congo outlet by Cameron, one of the most important additions made to the geography of Central Africa since the first discovery of the lakes by our own gallant countryman.

The exploration was due to the initiative of Colonel Gordon, M. Romolo Gessi, the successful navigator, being upon the Colonel's staff, and the boats with which the exploration was effected were brought up by the commander of the expedition.

M. Gessi started with two boats from Duffili, on the Upper Nile, on the 8th of March, accompanied by the well-known Italian traveller, Piaggia, and a crew of Arabs, and he reached Magungo, on the Albert Nyanza, on the 30th of the same month. From this point, he visited the falls of Naruma (or Murchison Falls), which are not far distant; and the point below the falls appears, as we had previously heard from Sir Samuel Baker, their discoverer, to be a very extraordinary place; for the noise made at night-time by the hippopotami, crocodiles, great fish, and beasts of prey, was so great as to almost drown the sound of the falling waters. Piaggia quitted the boats at this place to explore the course of the Victoria Nile, so we may soon expect further information as to the extent and character of Lake Ibrahim, discovered by Long Bey, between the Victoria Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza. Colonel Gordon's defeat and expulsion of Raba Rega, the hostile king of Unyoro, or Kittara, will, to a great extent, deprive this exploration of its previous difficulties and dangers.

Gessi started, on the 12th of April, to circumnavigate the Albert Nyanza, and he was nine days in carrying out his purpose. The details which have as yet reached us are very meagre, but of great importance. It appears that the lake is in reality only 140 miles in length by 50 in breadth so that Speke's first designation of the "little Luta Nziga," is not, after all, so far wrong. On the eastern side there are some available harbours,* but on the western shores the mountains come down abruptly to the water. No great river (always excepting the Victoria Nile) was found flowing into

Mr. Stanley, who appears to have marched from King Mtesa's capital, across country to the Albert Nyanza at the head of his own force and 2000 spearmen of Uganda, and pitched his camp upon the shores of the lake at a place called Unyampaka, named one of these large inlets, where he was camped, "Peatrice Gulf," after Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice. Mr. Stanley, when last heard of, was marching towards Ujiji, whence he proposed