13 NOVEMBER 1880, Page 3

Mr. Joseph Thomson, the young African explorer who, at the

early age of twenty-two, was called upon to head the expedition to' Lake Tanganyika, in consequence of the death of Mr. Keith Johnston soon after the start from Zanzibar, described his ex- pedition on Monday night, at a very interesting meeting of the Geographical Society. He had the good-fortune to conduct a party of 150 men to Tanganyika and back to the Indian Ocean without losing a single man after the death of his chief, and the still better fortune to verify the prediction of Stanley, made in 1876, that the lake Tanganyika would soon again overflow its bar, and fill the old channel of the Lukuga, long left dry, with its waters. Mr. Thomson discovered that this event had actually happened, and that the Lukuga once more drains the Tanganyika lake into the Lnalaba, or, as it is now often called, the Livingstone. Lieutenant Cameron saw the lake, in 1874, before the river had risen near to the height of the bar, Mr. Stanley saw it, in 1876, when a rise of three feet would have brought it back into its old channel, while Mr. Thomson appar- ently has seen it filling its old channel, and flowing with a full, rapid stream.