The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

THE SOUIiCeS OF THE NILE.

The expedition to discover the sources of the Nile,
which the Viceroy in Egypt has initiated, and which
has occupied, fur the past six months, the attention
of the learned of Europe, after delays inevitable to
the development of such matters, has started. The
Count d'Escayrac de l'Auture, to whom the com-
mand has been entrusted, after having obtained,
on the 20th of last July, the Viceroy's approbation
of the plan, came to Europe to procure the neces-
sary adjuncts for the execution of his enterprise.
Authorised to select twelve assistants, he sought
in Austria officers of topographical celebrity ; in
Prussia, a well-informed engineer ; in France,
naturalists ; in England, nautical assistance ; and
America has furnished him with an excellent
photographer, so necessary on such an explora-
tion . He has selected in London, Paris, Berlin,
and Vienna the necessary instruments for observa-
tions of the greatest variety, and nothing has been
neglected that could in any possibility interest
the scientific world. Magnetic observations will
not be neglected ; the infusoria invisible to the
eye will be studied according to the custom of the
most perfect naturalists ; geography will rest on
astronomical observations ; ethnography, so full of
interest in that part of the world, will be the ob-
ject of the constant attention and particular efforts
of men whose knowledge has been already
proved; photography will lend to science the
most valuable assistance ; it will thus bring before
the eyes of learned men a new world, and the
people of Europe will see all the expedition has
encountered of the interesting and remarkable.
This expedition, which has for its aim the discovery
of portions of Africa where the foot of the white
man has never trod, promises to make us better
acquainted with these unknown countries than
we are even with some parts of Europe. The
expenses of the expedition will be consider-
able, as the Viceroy has provided it with
everything that can forward its success ; and a
sufficient escort will protect these missionaries of
civilisation during their perilous expedition. Nu-
merous boats with steamers will transport them up
the Nile, as far as the last point where this river is
navigable. The expedition has everything in its
favour, in the great experience of its commander
and the generous ardour of those who take part in
it. The Count d'Escayrac does not deceive himself
as to the difficulties which attend him ; but what-
ever obstacles he may encounter he is prepared to
meet and to conquer. Thus the problem of the
sources of the Nile is near its solution, and the inte-
riorof Africa will be probably opened to science, at
the same time that the Red Sea, through the Isthmus
of Suez, may possibly be opened to the commerce of
all people. These two great undertakings will have
been the work of one prince, whose name will be
carried down to the most distant posterity. En-
lightened Europe regards with interest the course
of this expedition, and the Emperor Napoleon has
given a mark of his approbation in naming the
Count d'Escayrac an officer of the Legion of
Honour. The count started on the 3d of this
moith for Trieste, which he was to leave on the
18th ; his companions will join him at Cairo in the
beginning of October, and the expedition will then
begin to ascend the Nile. We shall expect its re-
turn in two years, which will prove a great event
in the scientific world ; for whatever happens, the
prolonged stay of twelve learned Europeans in the
most unknown part of the world cannot fail to
create great interest. We give the names of those
engaged in this expedition :
Le Comte d'Escayrac de l'Auture, commander of
the expedition ; M. Aubaret, a lieutenant in the
French navy and a chevalier of the Legion of
Honour ; M. Mayer, mining engineer, of Branden-
burgh, Prussia ; M. Richard, doctor of medicine
and surgery, of Paris ; M. Boleslawsky, lieutenant
of the Ist Pionniers of Metrovitz, an Austrian,
attaché to the Imperial and Royal Institute of
Military Geography ; M. Della Sala Count Kinsky,
of Milan, lieutenant in the 47th Infantry, attaché
to the Imperial and Royal Institute of Military
Geography ; M. Geng, assistant topographer, of
Vienna, an attache to the Imperial and Royal In-
stitu:e of Military Geography ; M. Pouchet, licencie
en sciences, of Rouen, France ; Mr. Anthony W.
Twyford, of London, late an officer in the British
transport service ; M. de Bai, draughtsman, of
. Montreuil-sur-Mer, France ; Mr. Clagne, of New
Orlean photographer; M. Tabonelle, of Olbceuf,
France ; and M. Bonnefong, also of France.
Now that Captain Richard Burton, so celebrated
for his daring visit to Mecca and Medinah, and his
penetration to the city of Harar, in Abyssinia, is
about to start under tho direction of the Royal
Geographical Society of London, for East Africa,
for the purpose of penetrating to Lake Unia,mesi,
and, if possible, to the sources of the Nile, it is
greatly to be hoped that the Foreign Office may
direct Dr. Vogel to turn his steps south-eastwards
from. Lake Chad, with the same objects in vie w.

AIVOMALIRS IN THE ENGLISH

CHARACTER.

(From the Times.)

There is hardly any amount of wrong or of an-
noyance which the Englishman is not prepared to
endure or inflict, as the case may happen to be.
Of the two he prefers to inflict it, but he also en-
dures it very kindly. When he is once in harness,
well strapped up, and his head as it ought to be,
he is as patient as a cab horse. The fact is, we are
of a mulish breed, half Norman, half Saxon, and,
as an Irishman would add, with several more
halves from other races. The spirit of our nume-
rous fathers is still in us, and sometimes it is a
very noble, sometimes a very donkeyiih one.
While wo pride ourselves on a dozen self-emancipa-
lions, we tolerate an amount of inconvenience and
worse in our public institutions, in the condition
of our towns, and in our domestic habits, that
would drive a Frenchman to insurrection and a 1
German to madness. The truth is, that under
the flattering conviction Visit we have a voice in
making the laws we put ourselves in two positions
at once, or, rather, we are continually performing
Oat feat of ventriloquism which consists iu one
man talking as if it were two or three dozen
voices. This reconciles us to the worst evils, for
A: we suffer them we have the consolation that
we also help to inflict them. Wo have no pass-
ports ; we don't pay a quarter of a farthing for
every half-dozen cabbages brought into our towns;
our market-gardeners and our hay and corn-chand-
lers do not stop for 20 minutes outside our towns
to have their innocent loads stabbed and perfo-
rated, pummelled, ripped open, and gutted. We
have not the mairie and the prefecture, the douane
and the octroi, intruding into every stage of our
existence. On the other band, few and favoured
are the localities where one can ride or
drive five miles without being stopped by a
privileged fcotpad and asked for lid. or 4id.,
or some other odd sum. The Welsh Celt fairly re-
belled against the nuisance a few years ago ; but
the English Saxon grumbles, stops his horse, pulls
off his glove, unbuttons his great-coat, fumbles in
his pocket, draws out his purse, asks for change,
pays, and drives off with a ticket he does not know
what to do with. Then as to rates and taxes, not
one householder in a hundred knows or has the
'beaus of knowing whether ho is cheated or not.
He pays, and pays, till he can pay no longer, and
beats a retreat, by going to a cheaper house or re-
ducing his establishment. We are rather proud,
indeed, of what we pay and suffer, as long as we
are able. The reduced gentlewoman remembers
with complacency that she paid rates and taxes 30
years ago in Marylebone parish, and knows the
figure to a a filling. It is a pardonable vanity in
that sex, bir. the other ought to look a little more
i; t these matters.

But what a power of patience, what a strong
traiition of Caxonism, what a preponderance of the
asinine parentage there must be in the honest
drudges of Manchester, to have stood for these 20(i
years to be fleeced by the Corporation of Liverpool !
When Mr. Fox was addressing his Lancashire friends
the other day he spoke strongly indeed on this point,
but he hardly gave it the importance and the
precedence it deserves. Indeed it should almost
stop the mouth of any agitator from the banks of
the Irwell, or any district drawing its supplies
from the Mersey. There is no tax under the sun,
and no application of a tax, not oven a grant for
an Australian bishopric, to compare with the enor-
mity of the Manchester people, with so many
calls for money in their own huge city, paying
many thousands a-year for the decoration of
Liverpool. What can they be made of ?
No wonder that with such excellent home diseip-
Ene they have till lately proved such patient tri-
butaries to he Imperial Treasury. The bread-tax,
the cotton • wool tax, the geese tax, the foreign pork
tax, and all the rest of them, aimed, as everybody
knows at the manufacturing districts, certainly did
strike one sometimes as more than an enterprising,
hard-working, hungry Englishman could be ex-
pected to bear. But the bearers, in the chief re-
gion of these people, had been well trained in their
youth in what might be called their home educa-
tion. As Mr. Fox observes, the British people
collectively cut off Charles I.'s head because he
wanted to tax them without their consent ; but