388 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



not well treated, a man having as many wives as he chose, they were com- 

 plete mistresses of their own houses and gardens, which the husband dared 

 not enter in his wife's absence. They were fond of show and glitter, and as 

 much as $150 had been given for an English rifle. On the arid plateau of the 

 interior water-melons supplied the place of water for some months of the year, 

 as they do on the plains of Hungary in summer. A Quaker tribe on the river 

 Zanga, never fight, never have consumption, scrofula, hydrophobia-, cholera, 

 small-pox or measles. These advantages, however, are counterbalanced by 

 the necessity of assiduous devotion to trade and raising children to make good 

 their loss from the frequent inroads of their fighting neighbors. 



Dr. Livingston's discoveries, in their character and their commercial value, 

 have been declared by Sir Roderic Murchison to be superior to any since the 

 discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Garna. But greater thaa 

 any commercial value is the lesson which they teach that all obstacles yield 

 to a resolute man. 



Dr. Livingston's researches confirm a theory proposed by Sir E. I. Mur- 

 chison in 1852, viz. that high crests of hard rocks constituted the eastern and 

 western flanks of the great continent through which the rivers escape, by deep 

 transverse fissures, from a comparatively low and flat marshy region, inter- 

 sected by a profusion of rivers and lakes. In the central region the water- 

 sheds are determined by slight elevations only, some of the rivers flowing 

 northwards into the Congo or Yaire, and others into the Zambezi, down the 

 banks of which the author travelled. The chief geological features of the 

 eastern and western flanking ridges of the continent were described by Dr. 

 Livingston, the principal altitudes having been approximately estimated by 

 the ebullition of water. On approaching the tract where he was once more 

 to be in communication with civilised beings, Dr. Livingston gives a very 

 striking account of the scenery around the great falls of the river Zambezi, 

 where that broad stream, after rushing over rapids, is suddenly compressed 

 into a narrow gorge and cascades, once a stupendous precipice, fringed on all 

 sides by the richest and most pictorial vegetation. 



ON THE GKEAT FKESH WATER LAKE OF SOUTH AFEICA. 



The existence of Lake Ngami long a matter of vague doubt and specula- 

 tion was established, towards the close of 1849, by Messrs. Uswell, Living- 

 ston, and Murray. Mr. Andersson, who has recently visited its shores, pre- 

 sents us with the following description of it: 



The whole circumference is probably about sixty or seventy geographical 

 miles ; its average breadth seven miles, and not exceeding nine at its widest 

 parts. Its shape, moreover, is narrow in the middle, and bulging out at the 

 two ends ; and I may add, that the first reports received many years ago from 

 the natives about the lake, and which concurred in representing it of the shape 

 of a pair of spectacles, are correct. The northern shore of ISTgami is low and 

 sandy, without a tree or bush, or any other kind of vegetation within half a 

 mile, and more commonly a mile. Beyond this distance (almost all round the 

 lake), the country is very thickly wooded with various sorts of acacia indi- 

 genous to Southern Africa, the Damara "parent tree," a few species of wild 



