GEOGEAPHY AKD ANTIQUITIES. 



Livingstone's discoveries. 



The latest discoveries of Dr. Livingstone, comnmnicated at a 

 meeting of tiie Royal Geographical Society, are of great interest 

 and importance, independently of their supposed connection uith 

 the ultimate source of tlie Nile. He has found, in the lirst place, 

 that the Chambeze, a considerable stream draining the northern 

 slope of the great wooded humid plateau in 11°-12° S. lat., instead 

 of flowing southward to the Zambesi, as was formerly supposed, 

 turns to the north-west and discharges itself into a large lake, 

 called Bangweolo, upwards of 50 miles in length. The plateau, 

 therefore, which he crossed, as described in one of his former let- 

 ters about the end of December, 18G6, and which the Portuguese 

 expeditions of 1798 and 1831 also traversed, turns out to be the 

 water-shed between the basins of the Zambe.>iand the lake sy.stem 

 of Equatorial Africa. It enhances the interest of this great dis- 

 covery to find that Bangweolo is only one of a chain of lakes con- 

 nected by rivers. The first in succession north of Bangweolo is 

 Lake Moero, which is oO miles in length, and varies in breadth 

 from 20 to CO miles. The town of Cazembe, visited by the Por- 

 tuguese, lies on the oanks of a much smaller lake called Mofue, 

 to the east of Moero. Continuing down stream is a third lake, 

 Ulenge ; but Livingstone had not, when he wrote, pursued his ex- 

 amination further in this direction, and he was not sure whether 

 this chain of lakes drained into Tanganyika, or continued to the 

 west of this lake, and communicated independently with Albert 

 Nyanza far to the north. The latter and their connecting rivers 

 flowed through a deep valley hemmed in by wooded mountains. 

 Another discovery of interest was Lake Liemba, which Livingstone 

 thought to be an arm of Tanganyika near its southern end. He 

 gives the altitude of this sheet of water as 2,800 feet above the 

 level of the sea; a datum which, we venture to remark, will af- 

 ford much food for geographical speculation until more definite 

 information is received. This elevation, in fact, agrees almost 

 exactly with that of Albert Nyanza as observed by Baker, and 

 with that of the intermediate Lake Tanganyika as deduced by Mr. 

 Findlay from an elaborate examination of the observations of Bur- 

 ton, Speke, and Baker. Thus if Liemba be connected (which is 

 not yet indeed quite determined) both with the Chambeze lakes 

 and with Tanganyika, the connection of the whole with the Nile 

 is extremely probable. But Livingstone reserves his greatest 

 marvel for the postscript to his dispatch. He had heard of a tribe 

 of Troglodytes, a dark-skinned race with oblique eyes, dwelling 



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