NATURE 



\Au^. 8, 1872 



Majesty's Consul ! The statement of Lieutenant Ilenn, | 

 which induced him to abandon the Rehef Expedition, 

 that Dr. Livingstone desii'ed all such parties to be turned 

 back, led directly to the miserable alternative of sending 

 up supplies in charge of a native ; while Mr. Stanley's 

 secresy and concealment of all particulars respecting 

 Livingstone's wants and intentions while at Zanzibar was 

 unnecessary and injurious. These proceedings, the objects 

 of which are transparently obvious, ntcessarily detract 

 from tlie warmth of our gratitude to the man who has cer- 

 tainly done no small service in accompanying Livingstone 

 to Unyanyembe, and in bringing home his letters and 

 journal. 



The supplies at Unyanyembe, and those procured from 

 the funds of the Relief Expedition, and sent on by his 

 son, will doubtless have enabled Livingstone to continue 

 his exploration, and, tliough the disappointment to whie.h 

 his notions about the Nile sources must inevitably lead 

 is to be regretted, there can bo no doubt that his contem- 

 plated further discoveiies will lead tovaluable results, and 

 we sincerely trust that the brave old traveller will, aft'.r 

 one more diflicult journey, live to be cordially welcomed 

 home, and to see some good fruits from his truly heroic 

 perseverance. We now proceed to give some extracts 

 from his despatches. 



Dr. Livingstone, in the following passage, describes his 

 march from the ridge overhanging the western shore of 

 Tanganyika to the great river Lualaba : — 



" In going west of Bambarre, in order to embark on the 

 Lualaba, I went down the Luamo, a river from 100 yards 

 to 200 yards broad, which rises in the mountains opposite 

 Ujiji, and flows across the great bend of the Lualaba. 

 When near its confluence 1 found myself among people 

 who had lately been maltreated by the slaxes, and they 

 naturally looked on me as of the same tribe as their 

 persecutors. Africans are not generally unreasonable, 

 though smarting under wrongs, if you can fairly make 

 them understand your claim to innocence, and do not 

 appear as having your ' back up.' The women here were 

 particularly outspoken in asserting our identity with the 

 cruel strangers. On calHng to one vociferous lady, who 

 gave me the head trader's name, to look at my colour 

 and see if it were the same as his, she replied, with a 

 bitter little laugh, ' Then you must be his father ! ' The 

 worst the men did was to turn out in force, armed with 

 their large spears and wooden shields, and show us out of 

 their districts. Glad that no collision took place, we re- 

 turned to Bambarre, and then, with our friend Muhamad, 

 struck away due north, he to buy ivory, and I to reach 

 another part of Lualaba and buy a canoe. The country is 

 extremely beautiful, but difficult to travel over. The 

 mountains of light grey granite stand like islands in new 

 red sandstone, and mountain and valley are all clad in a 

 mantle of different shades of green. The vegetation is 

 indescribably rank. Through the grass — if grass it can 

 be called, which is over half an inch in diameter in the 

 stalk, and from 10 to 12 feet hight— nothing but elephants 

 can walk. The leaves of this megatherium grass are 

 armed with minute spikes, which, as we worm our way 

 along elephant walks, lub disagreeebly on the side of the 

 face where the gun is held, and the hand is made sore by 

 fending it off the other side for hours. The rains were 

 fairly set in by November, and in the mornings, or after 

 a shower, these leaves w-cre loaded with moisture, which 

 wet us to the bone. The valleys are deeply undulating, 

 and in each innumerable dells have to be crossed. There 

 may be only a thread of water at the bottom, but the 

 mud, mire, or {Scot/ ice) 'glaur' is grievous ; 30 or 40 yards 

 of the path on each side of the stream are worked by the 

 feet ot passengers into an adhesive compound. By 

 placing a foot on each side of the narrow way one may 

 waddle a little distance along, but the rank crop of 

 grasses, gingers, and bushes cannot spare the few inches 

 of soil required for the side of the foot, and down he 



comes into the slough. The path often runs along the 

 bed of the rivulet for 60 or more yards, as if he who fiist 

 cut it out went that distance seeking for a part of the 

 forest less dense for his ax:. In other cases the Mualc 

 palm, from which here, as in Madagascar, grass cloth 

 is woven, and called by the same name, ' lamba,' h.ns 

 taken possession of the valley. The leaf stalks, as thick 

 as a strong man's arm, fall ofl' and block up all passage, 

 save by a path made and mixed up by the feet of elephants 

 and buffaloes ; the slough therein is groan-compelling 

 and deep. Every now and then the traders, with rueful 

 faces, stand panting ; the sweat trickles down my face, 

 and I suppose that I look as grim as they, though I try to 

 cheer them with the hope that good prices will reward 

 them at the coast for ivory obtained with so much toil. 

 In some cases the subsoil has given way beneath the 

 elephant's enormous weight ; the deep hole is filled with 

 mud, and one, taking it all to be about calf deep, steps in 

 to the top of the thigh, and flaps on to a seat soft enough, 

 but not luxurious ; a merry laugh relaxes the facial 

 muscles, though I have no other reason for it than that it 

 is better to laugh than to cry. 



" Between each district of Manyema large belts of the 

 primeval forest still stand. Into these the sun, though 

 vertical, cannot penetrate except by sending down at mid- 

 day thin pencils of rays into the gloom. The rain-water 

 stands for months in stagnant pools made by the feet of 

 elephants ; and the dead leaves decay on the damp soil, 

 and make the water of the numerous rivulets of the colour 

 of strong, tea. The climbing plants, from the size of 

 whipcord to that of a man-o'-war's hawsers, are so 

 numerous that the ancient path is the only passage. 

 When one of the giant trees falls across the road it forms 

 a wall breast high to be climbed over, and the mass of 

 tangled ropes brought down makes cutting a path around 

 it a work of time which travellers never undertake." 



In another despatch we have a more general review of 

 the results of his explorations, as follows ; — " I have ascer- 

 tained that the watershed of the Nile is a broad upland 

 between 10° and 12° south latitude, and from 4,000 feet to 

 5,000 ft. above the level of the sea. Mountains stand on it 

 at various points, which, though not apparently very high, 

 are between 6,000 feet and 7,000 feet of actual altitude. 

 The watershed is over 700 miles in leng'h, from west to 

 east. The springs that rise on it are almost innumerable 

 — that is, it would take a large part of a man's life to count 

 them. A bird's-eye view ot some parts of the watershed 

 would resemble the frost vegetation on window-panes. 

 They all begin in an ooze at the head of a slightly de- 

 pressed valley. A few hundred yards down, the quantity 

 of water from oozing earthen sponge forms a brisk peren- 

 nial burn or brook a few feet broad and deep enough to 

 require a bridge. These are the ultimate or primary 

 sources of the great rivers that flow to the north in the 

 great Nile valley. The primaries unite and form streams 

 in general larger than the Isis at Oxford or Avon at 

 Hamilton, and may be called secondary sources. They 

 never dry, but unite again into four large lines of drain- 

 age, the head waters or mains of the river of Egypt. 

 These four are each called by the natives Lualaba, which, 

 if not too pedantic, may be spoken of as lacustrine rivers, 

 extant specimens of those which, in pre-historic times, 

 abounded in Africa, and which in the south are still 

 called by Bechuanas ' Melapo,' in the north, by Arabs, 

 ' Wadys ; ' both words meaning the same thing — river-bed 

 in which no \vater ever now flows. Two of the four great 

 rivers mentioned fall into the central Lualaba, or Webb's 

 Lake River, and then we have but two main lines of drain- 

 age as depicted nearly by Ptolemy. The prevailing winds 

 on the watershed are from the south-east. This is easily 

 observed by the direction of the branches, and the humidity 

 of the climate is apparent in the number of lichens, which 

 make the upland forest look like the mangrove swamps on 

 the coast. In passing over 60 miles of latitude, I waded 



